SOME TWO weeks ago we called for the scrapping of the Kingston and St Andrew Corporation (KSAC) as an ineffective agency of urban administration. We cited the abysmal record of failure to bring some order to the chaotic business of street vending as one example of a catalogue of inefficiency.
The dominance of criminal enterprise and the complaints of the commercial sector are other reflections of KSAC ineptitude.
The latest manifestation is mismanagement of the May Pen Cemetery, the largest burial ground in the island. This place of the dead has lost the aura of final repose it should evoke in the minds of the living, especially those who mourn the passing of relatives and friends.
Yesterday we reported that burials have been suspended after a massive blockade of garbage and rocks was mounted at the entrance in protest against the deplorable conditions. Funerals were postponed; gravediggers sat idly under a tree.
An agreement signed between the KSAC and the Correctional Services Department is supposed to have prisoners working to clean the facility; but for some unexplained reason, this has not yet happened, though Town Clerk Errol Greene says they are trying to get this started by next week.
If prisoners under duress of state confinement cannot be readily activated, it is small wonder that defiant vendors remain unmoved.
We would have thought that an overgrown graveyard poses no great challenge to managerial endeavour; but not so in this the major municipality of a beleaguered nation. We wonder when the lofty pronouncements of local government reform will come to pass; and if indeed this awaits some form of municipal resurrection from neglected graves.
THE OPINIONS ON THIS PAGE, EXCEPT FOR THE ABOVE, DO NOT NECESSARILY REFLECT THE VIEWS OF THE GLEANER.
