Residents forced to use standpipe
It is minutes to 11 a.m. on Tuesday — the last of three no-movement days this week. A teenage girl and her younger brother emerge from a yard on Barnes Lane off Maxfield Avenue, in St Andrew.
They crossed the road to the community’s standpipe, wet their toothbrushes and crossed back to the other side to brush their teeth. This, the girl says, has been a regular routine for her and other persons in the community for years. As the siblings brushed their teeth, 62-year-old Paul Haslam fills up dozens of bottles with water.
“Sometimes when yuh come out here suh yuh tink a big dance a keep and Stone Love string up the way the place full a people. People from all over Maxfield have to come get dem likkle water. Any time water guh way from out a di pipe, mi fret and pray fi it come back. Dem say a no-movement day, but mi have to move wid di jugs dem to get likkle water,” he said.
Haslam said sections of Maxfield Avenue have been plagued by water woes for more than three decades but added that some residents are partly to blame.
“We have to partially blame wiself because is not everybody would wa get regularised and pay dem water rate. It is just the minority who would want to pay. Mi see di water people dem come round here nuff time and say dem ago run pipe and ting but it nuh really reach anywhere,” he said.
Another woman who also came to fetch water with two small boys said she often feels like she lives in the ‘country’.
“Sometimes it come like a river we go because more time we have to store up di clothes dem and bring dem here so and a Whitfield Town mi live. But mi have to bring dem here suh come wash more time. Dem type a living here come like when yuh live a country and have to go river with bath pan guh wash,” she said.
The woman said she often has to rent a cart to transport the commodity.
“Every now and again a water truck will pass through but is once in a blue moon. When di truck nuh come you have to pay a cart man $700 to full a drum so yuh can imagine for people who have more than one drum. It serious bad pon we round here. Mi would want to bathe under shower too,” she said.