For several decades Jamaicans living below the poverty line have been forced to survive in an environment that offers little or no hope to them.

We have noted, with grave concern, how our elected political representatives have stepped forward, presented themselves as the messiahs, but have inspired no confidence at all in those who depend on them for policy guidance.

A look at some of our communities across Jamaica, but particularly in the Corporate Area, would show that, instead of the living condition of people improving, the negative effect of economic mismanagement and corruption has only resulted in the lives of the people who inhabit those spaces being reduced to sheer hell.

Communities of West Kingston, including sections of Tivoli Gardens, Lizard Town, Denham Town; those in the prime minister’s South West St Andrew constituency like Maxfield and Waltham Park, Greenwich Town, among others; and the worst of them all, sections of Western St Andrew, to include Riverton City and Seaview Gardens, are in appalling conditions.

Yet, we could also mention the Grant’s Pen area of North East St Andrew, sections of East Rural St Andrew, Eastern St Andrew, South St Andrew, North Central St Andrew, East Kingston, further afield to sections of Central St Catherine, Central St James, and North West St James. The stories emerging from those parts would drive some of us to tears.

Our informal analysis of poverty in such communities shows that a great deal of the complaints of sour living and social conditions come from Western St Andrew, represented in Parliament by Mr George Anthony Hylton. In particular, tales from Riverton City, home of the city’s dump, have equated to woe of the worst kind. Apart from the challenges of unemployment, the dwellings of citizens are worse than most of those in the slums of New Delhi and Johannesburg.

People, like the many hogs that roam the territory daily, wallow in filth, due to the unmolested flow of raw sewage daily, something that was again brought to journalists earlier this week.

Yet, we have people in Parliament who dress up every day in their suits and gloat as if everything is sweet and dandy. They, we believe, have no shame. For their very failure to provide basic necessities for the people whom they swore to serve when they were seeking their votes, reflects their true identities — that of being perfect failures.

We note, with a pinch of excitement, that Prime Minister Simpson Miller outlined plans for the development of her own constituency last Sunday at a local party conference. We wish that the pronouncements were not just part of another plan to shove constituents into a comfort zone and deliver nothing in the end.

We hope that other leaders in other constituencies will step forward with tangible plans for the structural, social and economic development of their geographical zones.

For too long the people of Riverton City have been cast aside as if they too should become garbage. We have highlighted these ills before, and Mr Hylton has responded in his own way, usually saying that plans were in the pipeline to develop that entire area of the constituency; and from this, too, we are bound to elicit another such response from the man who happens to be the minister of industry, investment and commerce.

The pipeline has become rusty. It is time for action and not another round of diatribe against those who choose to bring to light some of the follies that abound.