ALMOST two months shy of a year since heavy rains from Tropical Storm Rafael caused the collapse of 80 metres of road in McGlashen, in the hills of St Andrew West Rural, concerned residents say no word nor work is evident on the side of the authorities or their incumbent political representative Juliet Cuthbert-Flynn.

Residents on Saturday, November 2 last year, retired to bed with the road intact, however, at daybreak Sunday they awoke to find themselves marooned in the community with the road — which also served as an alternative route from Golden Spring, St Andrew, to Junction, St Mary — gone.

After the initial shock, residents on November 4 worked feverishly to carve footholds into the muddy mountainside for a path, creating the community’s only link to adjoining areas.

The Jamaica Observer, during a visit to the area last Friday, found that the narrow dirt track that the residents had carved out had graduated to a marl-hardened driveway, giving vehicles and individuals temporary access.

Farmer Ezra Willis, who, just two months before the road collapsed, received what he believes were divine instructions to move his container shop from the precise area where it had stood for years, said the community has been forgotten.

“Up to now, nobody nuh do nutten up here, away from the Councillor [Chrishina Richards, Brandon Hill Division (People’s National Party)], give wi a load of marl; nobody else nuh do nutten at all. Anything yuh see done from dere to dere, is manpower; community people come together and put road there so that we can come across here, definitely,” Willis claimed.

Asked whether the National Works Agency (NWA) had conducted assessments, as promised in the days after the disaster, Willis said: “I don’t know; I see people come on there all the while, take a one glance, stretch tape, survey, and do some more stuff, and I don’t see nobody come back after that.

“So if it wasn’t for our own hands, you wouldn’t drive come over here,” he told the Observer team on Friday.

Willis said the community waited until about February this year for help to arrive, before they decided to take matters into their own hands.

“The community guys have some truck, so all these stuff that you see — these stones — they bring them here and we spread it. Vans with guys on it with shovel, take it up from over there, come in, put it on it, until it come like that — whether rain or shine, we can go cross,” he told the Observer.

Even then, Willis said all is still not well, given that Jamaica is again in the hurricane season, which ends in November.

“Yuh can si wi mark some a di bad spot, like where when rain fall it gi trouble. The guys dem tek up couple van load a marl, but wi need help because look here, remember we manpower dis and wi haffi go manpower the marl when you can just get a backhoe and seh tek up dis for di guys dem,” he said.

According to the farmer, the community has been abandoned by the incumbent Member of Parliament, who has held the seat since winning it in the 2016 General Election and again in 2020.

Farmer Ezra Willis tells the Observer how the community has managed since heavy rains from Tropical
Storm Rafael caused the collapse of 80 metres of road in McGlashen, in St Andrew West Rural, last year.

“From this break, she make two trips or one trip up here, I don’t see she come back at no time at all and say she is going to do this or she a try fi do this; nothing at all, not even as much as a banana seed when we a work there. The councillor hands kinda tied; definitely, she was here…She give wi a load of marl, it’s still there. We don’t get nutten at all, they don’t give wi a backhoe say, ‘Put it there, spread it,’ is like seh dem just gi wi an done. Wi haffi find wi way,” he declared.

According to Willis, the authorities seem to have been overwhelmed by the magnitude of the breakaway.

“It’s like from them come in and si di size landslide, everybody lose dem head; dem forget we. Maybe when this hurricane season finish we don’t have no road again,” he chuckled.

In the meantime, the constituent is predicting that the community will not be the only thing to be cut off by a landslide of some kind in the days ahead.

“I think she is going to lose the election this year, because she don’t pay the people dem up here no attention, and I think this can show you that nobody really business wid we because she’s a Member of Parliament and she should be the first one trying to get we across — to and from. I don’t think she represent we that well up here, because if you represent we, definitely a shouldn’t we do this.

“Nuh care how much people live back here, because wi have property back here. [You can’t say] this can lock off, because nobody don’t live behind here; if is even 10 a we live back here, then a dem shoulda do dis. We haffi tek it up pon our head and haffi get road,” he reasoned.

According to Willis, the hard-working residents of McGlashen are not beggars and, as such, should be treated better.

“Inna our farming community here, we don’t need nutten more than good road, light and water, and if you a neglect all these things as a Member of Parliament, then yuh are not fit for this community. Whether you are JLP [Jamaica Labour Party] or PNP [People’s National Party], that’s me, because mi talk di thing as mi see it; not because mi may be PNP mi ago talk seh she nah do nutten. If the PNP deh here as well, mi ago tell di person straight up, dem nah do good,” he said.

“This place is like nearly a year now, nobody nuh look pon it. Nobody nuh intend to do nutten to it. Election deh right round deh so, [September 3] and see it deh, same way so. That simply mean, after the election it done, because if it nuh do before election it done, because whether government change or not, we still ago have this for another five years a look pon,” Willis fretted.

The
Observer’s trek through the community also revealed extremely low hanging electrical service wires, dangerously close to trees in sections of the community.

“Yuh think a likkle phone dem phone bout it and nutten nuh done,” elderly farmer Standford Jackson complained while making his way homeward.

According to Jackson, the wires had been dislodged from Hurricane Beryl in July last year. He said individuals had come to the community and taken photographs, but said nothing has changed.

A visually impaired man seen seated with other residents a few feet from one of the nearly downed power lines said, when asked about the dangers posed by the wires to individuals: “Mi a blind man, mi can’t see.”

One man seated next to him offered cynically: “Somebody haffi dead fi something happen”.

Farmer Stanford Jackson shows how dangerously low this electrical service wire is in their community of McGlashen in St Andrew.

WILLIS…dem forget we