Dr Rowley needs to help us

There was a meeting last Saturday at the Parish Hall in Diego Martin for all who were affected by the recent floods in the area. Being a victim still trying to come to terms with what happened, I attended. The meeting was productive I have to say, mainly because it provided us who came with an opportunity to vent our frustration at the slow pace of progress the official bureaucracy is making in seeing us back on our feet. I say so, because, when it comes down to the brass tacks, we really don’t want much, just a helping hand, a friendly smile from government officials when we visit the Corporation office and to see our representatives out in the field, checking up on us every day, making some effort to show they care, even if they deep down they really don’t care, or come with their hands swinging, as Dr Rowley did today.

 

You see, apart from talk, nothing of substance came out of the meeting, my house is still uninhabitable, the back walls are still missing, the furniture is still wiped out and all my memorabilia lost forever. It is that last part that hurts the most because while the other things can be eventually replaced, old family pictures, my children’s scribblings and drawings when they were tots, and so on, cannot. That sums up the position I guess, for nearly everybody ravaged by the floods who, like me, never gave a thought to insuring our property which we built chirrip-chirrip over many years without borrowing from anyone.

So, here was I hours after the meeting, writing this letter on my nephew’s laptop in the dead of the night, because I couldn’t sleep properly; you see, since the flood, I’m not sleeping where I was living for 30 years in La

 

Puerta, but by my sister in Diamond Vale and wondering every day, every night if the billions spent on show-off projects like NAPA and Brian Lara Stadium was still in the Treasury. All now my home and everybody else’s home for that matter could have been rebuilt from scratch, with no worries, since the biggest estimate to date of the losses we all suffered amounts to a paltry $150 million.

That’s why Dr Rowley cannot invite me to any meeting again at all. Or, maybe I should say, he COULD invite me, but I'll turn him down flat.

 

Erica Campbell-Moe

formerly of La Puerta,

Diego Martin.