Silent Hill gets loud in cry for water
Residents in Silent Hill, Clarendon, say they are not pleased with the performance of their political representatives who have failed to provide them with potable and irrigation water.
Farmers in the community told THE WEEKEND STAR that because of lack of water, many of their crops are destroyed.
“More while, half a we crop dead,” Lloyd Pennant, a farmer, said.
“A from me a 14 me deh a bush wid me mada and now me a 72. From dem time deh, we affi a cya water go a we grung,” Pennant said. “If we get running water, we would a better. We wouldn’t lose so much a wi crop,” he said.
Leon White, 68, says he has been living in the Silent Hill community all his life. He said that despite a reservoir and a pump in a nearby community, Silent Hill is not getting a drop.
“A dung deh so the water a come from. It not even half mile from yah so, and we can’t get no water,” he said.
“You can have so many people a live in one area and no water? A just dung the road the pump deh and no water no deh yah,” he added.
He told THE WEEKEND STAR that the Member of Parliament, Richard Azan, and the Councillor, Trevor Gordon, have been making promises to fix the water situation. However, nothing has been done.
Rayan Bennett, who describes Silent Hill as “the best place to live in Jamaica”, said there has been no running water in the pipes for the past five years.
“Interestingly enough, the water catchment area is located just below the community which supplies Christiana and Spaldings with water. We have two basic schools and a primary school that has to resort to buying water and storing them in tanks and drums in order to have water,” Bennett said.
“I am pleading to the NWC (National Water Commission) and the relevant authorities, this is 2018. A community in this day and age should not be without this basic commodity,” he said. Gordon, who is the councillor for the Spaldings Division, told THE WEEKEND STAR that he is aware that the community does not have water. He said that a water main is in one section of the community and most of the pipeline is rotten or has been dug out. “The [pump] station below Silent Hill is very near. They had pipe one time where water used to pump up there, but the last two years, the MP did put out a bid for water supply and someone won the bid,” he said. “They [the persons who won the bid] said they don’t have any money to supply the water, so we are waiting on them with regards to that. From they won the bid in February 2016, we don’t hear much about the pipe situation since. Every time we talk, they say they don’t have any funds to do it,” he added.