18.MAY.07

Editor: It’s with great frustration and disgust I write these lines. This government is hell bent on eradicating poverty in this country and throughout the region. Yet those officials who are in charge to oversee various projects are the very ones who retard the process.

Editor, approximately forty years have elapsed since many songs and dances were played over agricultural access roads through Maroon Hill, Greggs, Massey and the more recent Lauders Estate which is a network of roads which is indeed needed to assist in eradicating poverty in the South Central Windward Constituency.{{more}}

The Joshua Administration made a song and dance with no assistance to the poor struggling farmers, then comes the Labour Administration with a bigger song and dance along with our own country boy Offord Morris with nothing but empty dances with out song and music, even though his in-laws possess lands in the Massey Minton area.

Sir Vincent Beache will know what I am talking about, he was the Minister of Agriculture then, he brought surveyors and all the technocrats, yet without any progress.

After much suffering, then come the NDP Administration and Allan Cruickshank, another country boy who deliberately refused to assist the hard working farmers with easier access to get their produce out of their lands. Mr. Cruickshank song and dance was the farmers in that specific area did not vote for him. The years of struggling continued for an additional 17 years, we paid our land and income taxes nevertheless we made it with the health and strength from Almighty God. I know of a particular family who used to go on that hill and pray to God for proper roads to take out their produce that most the time remained in the field and rotted.

Thirty-five years elapsed, most of the older farmers have gone to the great beyond, and now emerges a new set of younger farmers who need the assistance to feed their families in a time when food security is being the topic of the day. There are hundreds of acres of fertile lands lying waste when we can produce all the food we can consume.

Editor, now we have the ULP Administration and another country boy in the person of Selmon Walters who can identify with the many struggles all the farmers went through and are still going through, we are seeing a little light behind the tunnel. Thanks be to God and to Selmon, the road is already cut and we are waiting for the concreting to make it vehicle worthy so we can carry our fertilizers and take out our produce more easily. The official who is directed to use the Venezuelan fund to surface the road is dragging his feet so when the rainy season starts they are going to say wait until next year again.

Mr. Representative get up and light some fire under these technocrats and bureaucrats, it is time enough for us to get our roads before poverty eat-out our eyes, they are the ones who make government look bad and return to opposition.

Michael Cockburn

PS: Editor I will like to find out how many feeder roads were built in South Central Windward from the Stabex fund. I will tell you why I asked this question in my next article.