Single father of three fears for sons’ future

Every day after Deron Daley leaves a blank canvas on Jamaica’s streets, pedestrians and motorists dump volumes of garbage for him to clean up after them.

But that’s not the biggest concern weighing on the mind of the street-sweeper. It’s the future facing his three sons aged 12, 14, and 15.

The single father, who usually earns $9,000 per five-day workweek while employed to the National Solid Waste Management Authority, has had his income slashed because he now works two fewer days weekly.

Mounting financial challenges, though, have made it tough for him to provide for his boys, who, he said, are in need of help.

“The wages I’m getting cannot help them,” Daley told The Gleaner on Tuesday as he stood outside his two-bedroom dwelling on Cambridge Avenue in Franklyn Town, Kingston.

“... If them can have a future in front of them ... if them get a little help, I’ll feel good.”

Describing the boys as “slow learners”, Daley says they have experienced great difficulty in grasping concepts during their lessons.

That narrative has become a disturbing truth defining the experience of thousands of Jamaican children, particularly so since the shuttering of schools in March 2020 because of the spreading coronavirus.

The development has left students increasingly detached from their peers and teachers, with many suffering high levels of learning loss.

Approximately 120,000 students have been out of touch with schoolteachers and administrators, Minister of Education Fayval Williams has said, but there are concerns that even those being reached may suffer regression because of the occupational hazards of online learning.

Daley is also fearful that unsavoury characters might mistreat and abuse his children.

The street-sweeper has taken on additional jobs to earn a “chump change, so that when them hungry, me nuh wah them stray for man to use them”.

Though the country’s poverty rate of 12.6 per cent in 2018 was the lowest in a decade, the coronavirus pandemic has eroded income streams for many, who now hope that their wages will track the inflationary target of four to six per cent.

“Sometime, is not a bed a rose, but you just have to fight with them,” Daley said of his struggle with his children.

“Sometime when them hungry, me seh, ‘Lawd, which pah ma guh get it,’ but me seh me soon come and carry the rubbish go dash weh, get the change and buy something fi dem fi eat and do without” he added.

Daley is also disappointed with the children’s mother, whom he claimed has been absent from the boys’ lives.

The Daley family is not registered with the Government’s flagship welfare, the Programme of Advancement Through Health and Education.

“Me wah somebody to help me full out the form,” the father said.

asha.wilks@gleanerjm.com