Community Focus: Water woes frustrate Spring Garden residents

August 21, 2018
A popular section of the Spring Garden River that residents come to catch water.
Sharon Wallace fills up her jugs after travelling from Tank Hill to Spring Garden for water.
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The people of Spring Garden in Trelawny are pleading with the relevant authorities to install more pipelines throughout the community and its surrounding districts so that more people can have better access to water.

Spring Garden is largely known as a farming area, but limited access and inconsistent water supply has long plagued the quiet rural south Trelawny community.

This is to the dismay of frustrated residents, some of whom told the Western STAR that they have to struggle carrying several jugs and buckets to one of three standpipes in the community just to get water.

The water, they noted, comes from the neighbouring St Vincent district, despite the fact that Spring Garden has a river and gets periodic rain.

"We need help because a years we a go through this," said one Dianne Annon-Green.

"There has been no water in the community for a while, and when it is here, only the people on the stretch of road get [water] because them deh near the standpipe. So, it is not everybody can get water or have even have pipe in them yard," she added.

 

LONG DISTANCE TO TRAVEL

 

Annon-Green, however, admitted that she is one of those people who does not get water from the standpipes, because she would have to travel quite a long distance. Instead, her household depends on the rain or the river that is close by.

"In drought, a the river a we source. Some people have to take taxi to come river to full up drum. We want things fi gwaan, the community want some help," she argued.

According to another woman, Sharon Wallace, she has to travel from Tank Hill in order to get water.

"It is very hard. It's been quite a while since we got any. Is check I come check just now and see little a come through the pipe, and is a drive I have to hire," said Wallace, who had some 10 jugs with her.

"So each time we want water, we have to come down here. And we sometimes have to take the river water too, and even drink it. That can't be all that safe. If we had a pipe up where we are living, then I would not have to come here or go Ulster Spring, Gentles, and all over for water," she added.

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