By Vernon Daley, Staff ReporterBLOCKED DRAINS, bad roads and ill-equipped markets are among the major issues on the minds of the island's newly elected Mayors.
These concerns kept popping up when eight Mayors spoke at The Gleaner's Editors' Forum, which took place at the newspaper's North Street offices last week.
Highlighting the critical problems they had to deal with since being elected following the June 19 Local Government elections, the Mayors repeatedly pointed to the poor infrastructure plaguing the parishes.
Mayor of Portmore, George Lee, said poor drains had created a major mosquito problem for the residents of the dormitory community, which sits in the parish of St. Catherine.
"We have some in-earth drains...some of them are caving in and they create severe
problems of flooding and
mosquito infestation," said Mr. Lee, who is the only directly elected Mayor. "Part of that solution is to pave some of those drains and we hope that that programme will come on later."
This, he added, would have to be supported by a public education campaign to help people understand the consequences of throwing rubbish into the drains.
Poor drains are also a problem for Mayor of Port Antonio, Alston Hunter. This, he said, causes flooding and leaves the roads littered with potholes whenever it rains.
"I think we have the most potholes in Portland than anywhere else," he told the Editors' Forum. The Mayor revealed that he planned to contract someone to go around with a truck to fill the potholes in the town.
For Mayor of May Pen, Milton Brown, poor markets is perhaps the most crucial issue affecting his town.
"We have a severe market problem in May Pen," he said.
Mayor Brown lamented what he claimed was the degeneration of the town's main market into a shack. He disclosed that the Parish Council would be working with MP for the area, Mike Henry, to clean up the market and make it attractive to vendors.
"It is our view that if the
market is in good shape the
people will be off the streets,"
he added.
The Mayor argued that cleaning the island's markets was one of the best ways to eliminate street vending and pointed to the Pearnel Charles and Constant Spring arcades in Kingston as examples of how proper facilities can pull sellers away from the streets.
Poor markets are also a problem in St. Mary. But Mayor of Port Maria Robert 'Bobby' Montaque said he and his team are putting plans in place to improve the situation.
"Most of the markets in St. Mary unfortunately do not have any showers and we are endeavouring to put showers in them for obvious reasons," he said.
Mayor Montaque said he was working with the business community to develop the Highgate market as a wholesale market. He said that preliminary studies show that the majority of vendors from St. Mary who come to Kingston to buy produce end up buying from St. Mary farmers.
"So, rather than having (Kingston) as the meeting place, we would like to have Highgate as that meeting place," the Mayor said.
Mayor of Falmouth Jonathan Bartley said that street vending continues to be a problem but suggested that within the next two weeks, the Council would be implementing measures to put the people in the markets.
