A 5-year plan for Constituency 14 (Part 1)

Dear Editor,

Community development is noble work. After ten months in office as Councillors of Constituency 14 (South Ruimveldt/Ruimveldt Industrial Estate), yours truly and Noelle Chow-Chee have seen tangible gains. As 2017 commenced we have been meeting with community leaders, aimed at producing our Five-Year Strategic Plan for Constituency 14: ‘A Strong, Resilient Community’. Such a Plan captures the vision for our Constituency while being a tool for continuity; a working document and a measure for the development of our community.

Constituency 14 hopes to be the first in five areas: (1) Producing a strategic plan for the Constituency; (2) Publishing its own newsletter/newspaper; (3) A sustainable community sanitation programme; (4) A flood resilient Constituency; and (5) Champion of GREEN initiatives.

Security

Constituency 14 has two active Community Policing Groups and another in its embryonic stages. It is our hope to create more such groups, which bolsters the work of our national Police, providing the first line of defence for our residents. We hope to continually provide capacity building by working with the Community Policing Organisation of Guyana, and related agencies. We intend to secure Constituency 14 with the utilisation of CCTV Cameras with links to a Policing Group Command Center in our Constituency.

Communication

We will improve our engagement with residents at regular intervals, especially engaging our youths towards community work. Residents’ ideas and feedback are also invaluable. We intend to fully utilise social media assets (residents can access our Facebook page at, “Constituency 14”) as well and traditional media, as such this ‘Letter to the Editor’. We also believe that a physical newsletter/newspaper has its place in bridging our information and communication gap. Additionally, we are in talks with radio station 93.1, which is headquartered in our Constituency, to allow us a 15 to 30-minute programme to bring residents up to date with community news. We aim for a culture of engagement and empowerment.

Housing regularisation

There are two areas is the Constituency where “squatting” is taking place. Our vision is to ensure that both areas meet the minimum housing standard. We have already engaged the Central Housing and Planning Authority for assistance in making sure this becomes a reality.

Additionally, we aim to encourage home builders in our community to ensure as far as is practical that homes are environmentally friendly, and energy efficient, if not totally solar-powered, inclusive of lighting used for open spaces.

We intend to engage the Guyana Energy Agency towards this end, cognizant that home design, and layout impacts energy cost.

Solid Waste Management

Our Constituency must be a leader in our solid waste management capabilities. We have been examining the ‘Cleanliness and Citizenship – Community-Led Total Sanitation’ (C&C-CLTS) framework. Such an initiative “presents a programme for communities to progress from clean-up campaigns, to a sustainable environmental programme to motivate, mobilise and organise communities to reduce the practice of ‘Open Garbage Disposal’ and clean-up communities so they become ‘Open Garbage Disposal Free’ and environmentally friendly; this is done by igniting and sustaining a change in sanitation and environmental behaviour,” according to specialist Audreyanna Thomas.

More broadly, we will continue to engage our National Integrated Solid Waste Management Strategy, especially focusing on issues like household composting, biogas generation aimed at reducing organic waste, and recycling. Additionally, we intend to engage the Communities Ministry as partners in implementing its public awareness campaign aimed at introducing primary schools students to the concept of waste separation and educating them on the benefits of adopting safe waste disposal habits.

100% rates & taxes collection

We have an appreciation that a large part of expenditures for services provided by City Hall comes from revenues received from rates and taxes. We will continue to encourage residents at every opportunity to do their part in paying their rates and taxes so that they can enjoy all the city services available to them.

Sincerely,

Councillors, Sherod Duncan and Noelle Chow-Chee