Sav mayor wants McKenzie to release funds for drain-cleaning

WESTERN BUREAU:

Savanna-la-Mar Mayor Danree Delancy is calling for the Ministry of Local Government and Community Development to immediately release funds from its Parochial Revenue Fund (PRF) to address concerns which have left several communities vulnerable going into the peak of the Atlantic hurricane season.

The hurricane season runs from June to November, and local governments have been tasked with ensuring community readiness amid forecasts of increased hurricane activity this year.

Delancy, the chairman of the Westmoreland Municipal Corporation (WMC), who was speaking at Thursday’s monthly meeting of the WMC, said municipal corporations were advised to use May and June allocations for emergency preparation works. However, up to mid-July, Westmoreland was still awaiting those funds.

“We continue to face challenges in the parish, and challenges at the corporation,” said Delancy. “At a recent meeting, some of my councillors were lamenting the fact that it is now the month of July, and we were told by the honourable minister [Desmond McKenzie] that we should be using May and June allocations in preparation for the hurricane season, and we are still yet to see June’s PRF provision.

“A number of our drains, not just in the town of Savanna-la-Mar but across the parish, are badly in need of cleaning. But as we all know, such activities cannot be carried out without funding,” added Delancy.

Using a biblical analogy to underscore the severity of the resource shortfall, which is basically calling on them to use less resources to do more, Delancy went into the Old Testament.

“This is tantamount to the Egyptians taking away the straw from the children of Israel and telling them to make the same number of bricks or even more, while they were not being provided with the straw,” he said.

Delancy went to warn that failure to carry out critical drain cleaning works could lead to flooding, loss of property, and possibly lives.

“We don’t want to have a scenario wherein we experience heavy rainfall, and then, as a result of this, our drains not being in a condition to carry off this excess water, we end up losing lives and property,” he said.

Delancy also criticised the discontinuation of a dedicated “special drain cleaning fund” that was traditionally made available by May, explaining that municipalities are now forced to dip into their limited PRF base allocations to address that situation.

“I’ve been told to use our PRF to do so, and I have a problem with using the PRF to do so, if we are not getting the allocation from the ministry,” he noted.

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