- Norman Grindley/Staff Photographer
A small boy on his way from school gazes at sewage bubbling from a National Water Commission manhole at the intersection of North and Bond streets in Kingston recently.
Glenda Anderson, Staff Reporter
JEAN SINCLAIR, 40, dreads the occasional bout of heavy rains which sometimes sweep the Corporate Area, lasting two days or more at a time.
She has very good reasons.
Her four grandchildren, ranging from three to seven years old, must then play and live in an unhealthy environment.
A cemented channel in her small dirt yard, cut to accommodate the regular flows of rain and sewage water, complete with a zinc trapdoor, empties into the gully which cuts across the community running at times parallel to North Street in Kingston.
Around the back a wall of rusty, zinc roofs form a barrier from the shallow gully, with its piles of garbage. While at the front of her zinc and steel gate a manhole, with a thin film of dried mud sits like a dormant volcano.
"Anytime you see it rain heavy the whole yard full up, and the cesspool come up. Everything just wash straight through, faeces, bloody water with (chicken) feather, everything."
TERRIBLE ODOUR
But she frets more for her four grandchildren who must often walk around or through the polluted flow to get inside.
"Hours be it we have to come out and clean it for them to walk to get into the yard," she says. "And the odour is awful, real, real bad. What we have to do is use a lot of Dettol or bleach."
Still, the family does not have regular medical checks. She says there has never been any cause to.
"The only thing I hear is the other day one of the little one dem say they have scratching and ringworm, she bout four, so is must be somebody she hear with it."
Busta, a Rastafarian who also lives in the yard, complains of tiny white spots and itchy skin which he said could be directly related to the flows.
RASHES
But across the road Woody, a 27-year-old mechanic and father of two children aged three and seven years, says he has recently had to take his daughter to the dermatologist after she developed a rash on her finger after playing in the dirt surrounding the area.
"About two weeks ago was the last time it came up, flood out the whole road and it was during that same period that I had to take her to the doctor.
"Him never really charge me still, him just carry him car come in and mi work it off but I had to pay for medication. Cost me roughly about $5,000 for the antibiotic and the lotion."
But, according to releases from international health bodies, children in situations where the communities face pollution from raw sewage could be at risk for serious long-term illnesses, including respiratory diseases and malaria.
According to Chief Public Health Officer Dr. Herb Elliot, the unsanitary conditions in these places has serious long-term public health effects.
"There are respiratory problems to think of, there's mosquito breeding and things like that," he said. "We do investigate all the situations which come to our attention though, and deal with the areas and cases as they arise."
But for Jean and her family, it's a recurring plague they try to deal with most often on their own, praying against another bout of heavy rains.
