Dear Editor,
I have not written a letter for quite sometime now to either you or Kaieteur. I would love to type my letters but there is no electricity where I live.
Sir, over the weekend I visited the Gethsemane Seventh-day Adventist Church at Soesdyke and heard -an Elder who is a school teacher complaining of being “so tired”. I enquired as to why he was tired since his school was up the Demerara River and has a Teachers’ House in the compound. He answered that he loved helping children that is why he is teaching, but he has to paddle several miles to a habitable house since the teachers’ house has no steps and it leaks, no toilet or other amenities.
Editor can you visualize paddling against the tide while the rain is falling?
I asked of conditions at Clemwood School and was told that, that school’s Teachers’ House is inhabitable too. But the teachers there belong to the area and go to their homes.
Now Mr. Editor, this brings me to conditions at the Silver Hill Primary School and Teachers’ Houses; I have spoken to the PNC Councillor for the area, even written and spoken to the Regional Chairman Mr. Clement Corlette, about conditions of these teachers’ houses within the past two years. The wooden trestles that house the water tanks are in danger of collapsing – this will destroy the tanks – the teacher who lives in the Head’s house has to buy water and pay to weed the yard. This house is in dire need of repair, presently it can be described as a wreck for a house. For example: toilet leaking, gutters falling, floor boards rotten, louvres missing and the yard is a thoroughfare since there is no fence.
The former head teacher has moved to a more convenient area so a new head has been appointed. This Head teacher now has to travel from Coomacka to Silver Hill using two different sets of transport daily because the other teachers’ house is in a state of disrepair, no one could walk up the front stairs. Editor, I must also mention our school, this past August a new gate was affixed to the back fence of the school yard but it is now lying on the ground as the ‘wrong type of hinges were used’.
Now, Silver Hill Health Centre, there is no electricity but there is a solar plate turning black on the roof. The electrician took the batteries away over a year now. This Health Centre has a refrigerator that was never connected to the power point much less put to use; and certain drugs must be kept cool to maintain their potency.
Please help our area achieve some improvement by publishing this letter.
Yours faithfully,
(Name and address
supplied)
