Recht Door Zee residents renew their plea for road repairs

Now that the May-June rainy season is here, residents of Parfaite Harmonie, West Bank Demerara, particularly the Recht Door Zee community, are renewing their calls for the relevant authorities to begin urgently-needed repairs to the community’s road network.

The Parfaite Harmonie Housing Scheme is one of the largest housing developments in Guyana and is home to thousands of residents, thus proper

A section of the street laced with flooded potholes

roads are of paramount importance, according to residents.

The residents complained of not being able to access the roads during the rainy season owing to potholes becoming inundated and sometimes harbouring reptiles.

“We have the holes in the road so big there is hardly any space at the side to walk and when you are dressed for work, how can you walk in the mud to go get a bus?” resident Bibi Ally complained.

She added that the bushes at the side of the roads were also a problem, since they serve as a haven for reptiles and sometimes criminal elements who ambush residents walking the road at nights.

The residents are more concerned since Chief Hydrometeorological Officer, Dr Garvin Cummings advised that citizens should be prepared for an above-normal period of rainfall. He advised that they should take precautionary measures, since above-normal rainfall could result in severe flooding along the coastland.

Electricity

The residents are also complaining about the quality of electricity they receive,

A parent, in the background, fetches his daughter on his head to avoid soiling her shoes on the pothole-plagued road

noting that many of their appliances were being damaged on account of load shedding. “Every day, we have low voltage or blackout and a lot of the appliances does get damage and nobody will give you back any money to buy it back,” James Stewart said.

He told Guyana Times that he have been living in the area for more than five years and many of his electrical appliances have been damaged as a result of the unreliable power supply. “Sometimes you go to work and come back and your fridge not working, the TV won’t come on, or the bulbs blow,” he added.

The residents are pleading with the authorities to bring them some temporary relief as it relates to the condition of the road. They complained that they were unable to access goods and services, since the delivery trucks and taxis were refusing to traverse the roads.

The housing scheme has not been handed over to the Regional Administration as yet, and is still under the control of the Central Housing and Planning Authority (CH&PA). However, several attempts to contact CH&PA Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Lelon Saul were unsuccessful.