She's had it with UDC

JOYCELYN ADAMS FEELS as if she is being given the "runaround" by the Urban Development Commission (UDC).

She lives in a small house in Evelyn Avenue, Bayville, St Michael, while her two adult daughters, son, and ten grandchildren aged two to 16 years old occupy an old dilapidated house in the backyard.

Last year when her yard caved in, then director of the UDC, Startston Lavine, visited the family and expressed shock at their penurious conditions and said new houses would have to be built for them.

But to date the family is still waiting to be housed, and a frustrated Adams said since Lavine left the UDC, those plans no longer seemed to be on the drawing board.

The 66-year-old woman said she was recently informed by the commission that it had neither land nor house to provide for her huge family.

She said the UDC also offered to build the family a duplex on the spot where they now lived, but she refused the offer because she was getting old and needed her own space.

"I do not mind if there are two separate houses, but sometimes I can't take on all the noise," she stressed.

But she said the family was in need of urgent help, as only two of the adults worked and their salaries were barely enough to support the huge household.

Adams explained that her relationship with the UDC went back to several years ago when it began constructing waterborne facilities on her house. However, she said the contractor who started to build it never returned to complete the job and after a few years passed, she turned it into a kitchen. The area though is so small and congested that there is not even enough room for one person to manoeuvre.

Last year the UDC also provided the family with a potable toilet, but Adams said that too does not function properly because too many

people are using it.

"Right now it needs a pump and the people have to come almost every week to pump it off," she stated.

The house that her children and grandchildren occupy in the backyard is also in a shabby state and falling to pieces.

"All they can do is sleep in there," she cried.

Adams said she was fed up with how they were being treated, but was holding on because the family could do no better.

"I am getting the runaround. When I call UDC they tell me to call my representative Patrick Todd and when I call Mr Todd, he tells me to call the UDC. I have to get help from somewhere. I am tired of them. If I could help myself I would not go to them!"

When contacted, UDC director Derek Alleyne refuted everything Adams said.

He explained that the UDC had already received Town & Country Planning approval to build a duplex on the spot for the family, but Adams was unwilling to have her family continue to live with her.

"We wrote her asking for permission to build a duplex for the family. She did not want that. She said she wanted to be by herself.

"We cannot give her a house and leave her children and grandchildren out in the cold. We are helping the entire family.

"There are a lot of them and the children go to school in the area; we do not want to uproot them. Until she gives us the permission to build there is nothing more we can do, because we do not have any land," Alleyne said.