Farm suffers as pipes run dry in Redwood
Published:Saturday | March 10, 2012 | 12:00 AM
REDWOOD, St Catherine:
SIXTY-SIX-year-old Tensil Dias of John's Pen in Redwood, north-east St Catherine, is a fervent livestock farmer.
She started out more than 19 years ago with 125 chickens. She later added pigs, cows, and goats to her stock. The vivacious senior outlined how they used the income generated from farming to educate their nine children.
She told The Gleaner that over the years, the unavailability of piped water has hampered the business she operates jointly with her husband, Lebert. The hassle to obtain the precious commodity has caused them to scale down.
"When I don't have any water, me and my husband use a van and go to Rio Magno River, and we use jugs and bucket and fill drums to get water to do whatever I have to do - take care of my animals and so on - but it's too hard to do that," she explained.
According to Dias, the situation has worsened since the end of December last year, so she decided to join a small group of irate residents who protested recently in the community to highlight their frustration.
"From one day after election we nuh get no water inna di pipe, and we have over 60 hogs and mi can't get any water fi wash the hog pen," she told The Gleaner.
But Dias is not the only farmer affected by the consistent shortage of water in the small rural community located on the outskirts of Linstead.
Fifty-four-year-old Eric Edwards, who ventured into farming 22 years ago, bemoaned the scarcity of the commodity
"We can't survive without water. We definitely can't survive without it," he lamented.
"We can't set no crop without the water ... . When the animal come in, they want water. Right now, to be honest, if it wasn't for the Rio Magno River - and we have a little spring up inna di hill name Walker's Spring where we catch water sometime - it would be more serious on us."
Community neglected
In the meantime, the People's National Party's candidate for the Guy's Hill division in the March 26 local government elections, Michael Blair, expressed displeasure with the quality of representation meted out to constituents by Gregory Mair, North East St Catherine member of parliament.
"I think we must send a signal to Mr Mair. He has always been giving a blind eye as it relates to water and the road," Blair told the gathering.
"We as a people need quality representation. We don't want no mediocre representation, therefore our roads must be attended to, and we want bridge," he said in reference to the Dover bridge, which was washed away in September 2010 by Tropical Storm Nicole. "But all of us have the same sentiments about the water. We believe that we have been sabotaged," Blair said.