HAVE YOU forgotten about us?
This is the question on the lips of residents of Lower Burney, Mapp Hill, St Michael, to the Ministry of Transport and Works after their road had been dug up and left in a terrible state for more than two years.
In fact, outspoken resident Adrian Kellman refers to the pothole-filled area as a quarry.
The deep holes, now filled with muddy, marly water, defeat the best attempts to keep a vehicle clean while, according to a young man who lived in a neighbouring district, a good shower of rain forces pedestrians to gingerly inch their way along the sides of the road.
Kellman, who has lived in the area since 1976, said the road had become a driver’s hell after “the present administration came and dig it up”. The intention then, he said, was to give the neighbourhood a new road.
Before, the road had “one or two potholes”, but now, said Kellman, the entire road was filled with potholes.
“It is ridiculous. After promising people so much, it is time enough that they come and address this problem. It is too long now,” he said.
“I have an old car there and I shame to clean it ’cause when I got to drive through, by the time I get yonder it better didn’t clean,” Kellman told the Sunday Sun.
In fact, said Kellman, even a donkey and its cart would have problems negotiating the road.
“When rain falls and you are on this side you have to get a boat to get through here,” he said, adding that he suspected the deep, water-filled holes might also be providing a breeding ground for mosquitoes.
“And when you get here,” he said indicating to one section of the road where there is a drop-off into a hole, “and you have a vehicle and it’s low like a car, the bottom of some people vehicle scrapes.”
He fears the next rainy spell would make the road all but impassable.
“It’s going to be like a swimming pool. All you need is some snorkel gear and you could swim through here,” he said.
Kellman said he had called the ministry on numerous occasions but got no response. He felt it made no sense trying to physically see someone in authority, suspecting he will be told, again, that the person was not in office.
“It is time that the present administration, after promising people so much, come and look at this state of this road,” he stressed.
Meanwhile, two women who were among a number of Jehovah’s Witnesses walking through the area also complained about the state of the road, saying all that was ever done was to throw “little gravel in the holes and disappear”.
An elderly resident, who did not want to be identified but who said he had been living in the area for the majority of his life, said he remembered when the road was a cart road.
But two years ago, just before elections, the road surface had been removed and “I ain’t even see nobody come back to look”.
“People calling and telling them and them ain’t paying you no mind,” the man said.
