Foot-dragging politics and NWA inaction
Along the Mount Salus Road in the constituency of West Rural St Andrew there is a valley of sorts which is a natural reservoir for water whenever it rains heavily.
Because of that fact, in the 1970s a huge rectangular concrete-lined ‘tank’ was built which allowed in excess water. At the base of that ‘tank’ is a soak-away, and from what older residents relate to me, no real maintenance work was ever done on it.
In the unrelenting showers which accompanied Hurricane Nicole in 2010, the inevitable occurred. The blocked soak-away brought about the formation of a lake which buried two cars and rendered the lower floors of two houses unusable. For many days residents on both sides of the lake were trapped while the two houses suffered major damage due to ingress of water, mud, pebbles and stones.
Although then MP Andrew Gallimore of the JLP was lacklustre in his constituency representation and probably wanted out, the fact was, Nicole was a major headache for the country. As Gallimore walked out and Paul Buchanan of the PNP walked in in 2011, delighted PNP supporters moved their focus to the first-time winner, Buchanan.
A stretch of road which had suffered significant damage from 2009 was resurfaced, but one ‘small’ matter was left unattended to. I will get back to that in a while.
As even JLP supporters had to grudgingly admit that Buchanan had succeeded in a particular area where Gallimore had allowed in too much inaction, residents began to expect great things from the new MP.
In 2012, before the beginning of the hurricane season, between the National Works Agency (NWA) and the new MP, a crew of young men from the constituency, eager for any kind of work, were employed to remove excess sand and stones from the concrete tank and to clean the soak-away.
After about a week of hard work, which I personally witnessed, funds dried up, the job was left about 70 per cent incomplete and the young men sent away. Although late-season Hurricane Sandy caused major damage to crops and property in the eastern end of the island in 2012, it did not carry the level of rainfall which accompanied Nicole in 2010, thus there was no flooding by the soak-away.
Let me now make mention of the resurfaced roadway which is typical of rural St Andrew, in that it is basically hill country where the roads have many twists and turns, and gradients of 20 to 35 degrees are not unusual. Whenever it rains even moderately, thousands of gallons of water cascade down the particular section of that hill, enter two drain inlets then into underground channels which run beneath private property, then out into a mini-gully.
For about three years a section of the underground channelling has been blocked and the water rushes out through a manhole cover into private property and floods out an entire apartment; all six rooms. The picture which accompanies the article shows the water just as it is about to enter the apartment.
One contributing factor is that the NWA did not place any grillwork at the entrance to the drains in an effort to keep out heavy debris from entering and clogging up the underground channel.
At just about the time that work began on the Mount Salus soak-away, the NWA had a small crew attempting to clear away the years of debris by having men crawling from the back end where the channel emptied into the mini-gully. Again, after a few days, the men were paid and the job was left about 80 per cent incomplete.
I congratulate the NWA for the resurfaced roadway and Mr Buchanan’s endless promises of the last few weeks, but I am forced to ask why were these two bits of work started if the MP and the NWA knew that there were no funds to complete them?
Is it that Mr Buchanan has decided that it doesn’t really matter if private property is damaged as a result of poor public work, as long as he has the politics of numbers on his side. For now?
Or, was this just Mr Buchanan’s attempt to placate a handful of unemployed young men, too many of whom are still expecting the PNP’s broken-down JEEP to drive into the constituency and remain there for a little bit longer than a while?
Is this not just plain government waste, or should I be overjoyed that at least the MP allowed a few unemployed young men to ‘eat a food’ for about a week?
In a previous column I have praised the MP’s action on many other fronts. In the two instances highlighted, Mr Buchanan has begun a 100-metre sprint but has faded badly after only 30 metres.
Will he ever finish the race?
Pregnant women, beware of plastics
Hubert Wilson is a Jamaican, a chemical engineer who lives abroad and is a regular contributor to, and invaluable analyst on the Caribbean Online Forum .
Recently he commented on the topic, ‘Is the use of plastics for packaging food harmful to our health,’ which I believe needs to be seriously considered by pregnant women. I am carrying it in full.
‘I have just learned from the news networks that the medical community has come forward with a recommendation that gestating women should avoid all contact with plastics during the term of their pregnancy. It appears that they have finally come to the realisation that exposure to plastics is harmful.
‘I remember as early as 1981 after inspecting a facility that manufactured PVC, I started asking questions that annoyed my management. I observed that the fence-line of the facility was dotted with vinyl chloride monitors. It had been determined back then that vinyl chloride monomer (VCM) was hazardous (carcinogenic).
‘What struck me as strange at the time was that PVC pipes and PVC sheets and film were the preferred method for packaging food. This was done even though it was evident that PVC products had significant residues of VC monomer. It took another 25 years for the health regulators to realise that just as much harm could be caused by the residues and placing these products in contact with food just merely facilitated the ingestion of VCM.
‘Although it took a while for the medical community to recognise the hazard, they must be commended for recognising it at all.
‘Let us examine just how their recommendations might be implemented. Before we do, let me demonstrate how pervasive plastics have become in the life of humans.
‘Through a masterful sales machine, almost 80 per cent of American households store leftover food in a Tupperware container or some other brand of plastic containers. Through a similar marketing machine, the American public has been indoctrinated into the belief that water from the tap is not good for your health.
‘Instead, they should buy water packaged in plastic bottles which leach a lethal dose of biphenyl A into the water.
‘All beer not bottled in glass containers is packaged in cans made from an aluminum alloy, the internal surface of which is lined with plastic. Canned food, fish or beef are no longer packaged in tin-lined steel cans, instead, they are packaged in plastic-lined metal cans.
‘The passenger capsules of cars, trains, buses and airplanes are all generously manufactured from plastics. Most of the common fabrics worn by us and used to adorn our surroundings are predominantly made from blends of plastic fibres. The most common is hexamethylene adipamide which we know as nylon. All cosmetics are packaged in plastics.
‘Some of the most expensive handbags are made from plastics. Women will have a really hard time detaching these from their arms and shoulders. Finally, the next time you walk the aisle of a supermarket, just observe how much of our food is packaged in plastic containers.
‘The tragedy is that in most of these plastic applications, the users are under no regulatory obligation to tell the consumer about the hazards to which they are being exposed.
‘I will pose a question to my colleagues. Can a pregnant woman avoid plastics for nine lunar months?’
The manufacturing, packaging and distribution industries have too much invested in plastics to make any radical changes now, and some consumers will shrug and adopt the fatalistic view that ‘something is going to kill me anyway.’
But pregnant women should take note of Mr Wilson’s professional observations and the question asked at the end.
observemark@gmail.com
ANDREW GALLIMORE…former member of parliament for West Rural St. Andrew