Interviews and photos by Rayon Harrinandan and Arian Browne
Stabroek News recently visited Linden and while there asked the man/woman in the street about the issues affecting them. Their responses follow:
Ian Jacobis, unemployed – ‘There are no jobs in Linden. The roads, if you need to go somewhere depending on where you are going you have to leave home giving yourself enough time to navigate the huge potholes on the road. There are so many other things; I am out of a job four months now. I can’t even pay my bills, light bill, telephone bill, I am sitting here hoping I can get a job. The town council does nothing for the people, we need more businesses so people could get jobs.’
Lynette Adams, housewife – ‘Our roads are in a very bad state, in the rainy season buses cannot traverse the roadways, they need to be fixed. We feel completely forgotten. The Regional Executive Officer was there twice, he held meetings and still nothing has been done.’
Kirk Sue, fleet service clerk – ‘Power outages and the water that goes off in the middle of the day. The town council does nothing about the garbage around the area. In six years they have cleaned once. Flooding is bad, even in the market and it’s the town council’s job to fix it.’
Edward G Welcome, retired – ‘We need jobs for the youngsters, there are many youngsters out there who have never worked. The bauxite company previously employed a lot of the youngsters, there is the Bai Shan Lin company, they employ yes, but they have no union and because of this they fire you without giving you any good reason. [President Donald] Ramotar promised that by now we would have our own television station, it is more than a year and that is yet to happen.’
Vincent Walton, logger – ‘For the past five years the opposition has always been making promises, we don’t have proper water to drink. In the rainy season slush runs into our drinking water, they promised a power plant we are still waiting. Most people get their living by burning charcoal and forestry is always on our backs for that, we are hoping that the government does something for us in terms of power, water and better roads.’
Allison Jennings, vendor – ‘The garbage that is on the main road is a sore to the eye, in a few hours it is all in disarray. Men drink and then urinate on the wharf and the town council does nothing about it. It is really terrible, the smell this leaves.’
Latesha Phillips, office manager, Miss Linden – ‘Unemployment is very high in Linden and the school system is in need of development. The crime rate is also very high. I would like to see better infrastructure, most roads are dark or have street lamps that are not working. Roads are being reconstructed two or three times a year and still in a matter of months are in a deplorable state again.’
Ronella Jarvis, salesgirl – ‘There is quite a large number of low vision children in Linden, I am a parent of two and we really need a secondary unit. There is no facility for these children and there are a lot of them. Some have to go to town. I would like the authorities to look into this.’
Gairy Mc Farlane, bus conductor – ‘The unemployment rate in Linden is very high. You find there are a lot of children with CXC who have to find jobs out of town. Government needs to find things for the youths to do. The spate of robberies here is alarming, we need more police patrols and protection.’
Yolanda Lambert, cosmetologist – ‘I would like to see the government create more jobs so that people don’t have idle time to do idle things such as robbing. The bus park needs to have order, the touts need to allow passengers to choose what bus they want to travel with.’
