With this year’s hurricane season fast approaching, Denise Chito is worried that the house into which the Government moved her nine years ago will not survive any heavy rain as it is prone to flooding.

Now, the disabled mother of four children — ages 16, 15, 12 and four — has resorted to calling on Prime Minister Andrew Holness for help.

“I am here kindly asking the prime minister to please intervene in my situation. I am tired of the flooding. I can see where you are giving persons and families hope every day around Jamaica, please do me the honour and my children to give us hope,” Chito pleaded, tears welling in her eyes, during a recent interview with the Jamaica Observer.

“Now that the hurricane season is approaching — oh God — I fall in depression. Sometimes I go days thinking about the flooding and how me and my children would be in the dirty water like crocodiles. It gives me anxiety. Because of the weather now, I am always listening to the news to prepare myself,” she said.

Chito’s quest for proper housing began in 2011 when her stepfather’s mother claimed the plot of land where Food For the Poor (FFP) had erected a home for her in Linstead, St Catherine.

The house was later sold, resulting in Chito, her three daughters and common-law husband being given notice to leave.

They were forced to move into a small one-room house at Duke Street, downtown Kingston, where they all slept on one bed, she said,

Refusing to stay in that uncomfortable living situation, Chito went to several government agencies trying to get a plot of land to relocate.

In 2013, FFP erected a two-bedroom house for her on a plot of land in West Albion, St Thomas, which was leased from the Ministry of Transport, Works and Housing in 2013.

However, the new space in St Thomas only brought her more discomfort and fear.

“From I got the lot I have been flooding. I really have terrible flooding and my septic tank overflows. It’s not going down. I pay to draw it down but whenever the rain comes it just full up back,” she said.

“When I see the situation happening for so many years, in 2020 I asked to be relocated and I was told by the former Minister of Housing Pearnel Charles Jr that I should put it in writing, which I did,” she said.

That letter, dated December 7, 2020, which was the latest of several sent to the then Ministry of Housing, Urban Renewal, Environment and Climate Chang, read, “I have been suffering badly because of the flooding… I am in a terrible situation, please I am desperately asking for immediate attention.”

She said that letter had pushed the ministry to identify another piece of land in the St Thomas community in 2021.

“They said because of the constant flooding of my home, water soaking it and it’s rotting, they are going to build me a new structure. But when 2022 started I didn’t hear anything so I went to find out what was going on,” she said.

To her dismay, Chito said she was told that Charles Jr did not sign off on the construction of her new house.

Then, the Cabinet shuffle which took place in January saw the Ministry of Economic Growth and Job Creation reincorporating the housing, urban renewal, environment and climate change portfolios.

“I asked what would happen for me now? They said all of my requirements have to be resubmitted to Minister Robert Montague, but he [has since] resigned and I’m still stuck here and it is almost approaching another hurricane season and every time the rain fall heavily my house flood out. The last major flood was in 2020,” she said.

“When the flooding starts mi tell mi kids to climb up the ladder in the house. I can’t climb because I am disabled, so I stand on the bed. You know what my second daughter said to me the other day? ‘Look how wi a live, wi get the worst place inna the scheme’,” Chito said.

“Now I am being told that the only person who can help me to be relocated and get the new home built is Prime Minister Andrew Holness,” she said.

Chito said she believes that she is being treated unfairly because of her disability. She was badly disfigured at 17 years old by a jealous ex-lover who chopped her all over her body. She lost some of her fingers in the attack and the injuries to her knees were so bad that she had to receive physiotherapy to get her walking again.

“They gave me a raw deal in the first place. When I came here, people who lived here before me said the ministry was wicked to give me deh so. ‘Housing really put yuh deh so inna pond?’ ‘Yuh can swim?’ ‘Yuh have a boat?’ They would always say those things, but I didn’t understand because I wanted somewhere to live, until I started having my own experience of the flooding,” she said.

Last week, when a trough across the island caused some parishes, including St Thomas, to experience heavy rainfall, videos sent to the Observer by Chito showed her walking cautiously through ankle-high flood waters in her yard.

“If the rain neva stop, inna mi house woulda flood out again because the whole a the yard full up a water. I don’t even know if the drain weh dem install since year worked because water did still inna the yard. To me, it look like seh water haffi reach a level fi it start to work. It nuh mek nuh sense,” she said.

She also admitted that she is still making payments for the lease agreement on the land which should have been completed in 2016.

“Almost $300,000 lef’ to pay for the house and I should pay $4,000 per month, but the contract up already. I am still trying because mi have a likkle work a sell sweetie and snacks but the flooding mek mi feel discouraged. Mi a flood so it nuh gi mi no courage fi pay fi it,” she said.

Asked for a response Chito’s claims, the Ministry of Economic Growth and Job Creation requested that questions be e-mailed, but up to press time no response was provided.