Photos by Anjuli Persaud

This week we asked the man and woman in the streets about their lives in the areas of Lancaster, Liverpool and Manchester, Corentyne.

Sharon Andrews- Public Sector Employee
‘I am a resident of Liverpool and right now the only thing that is really affecting us is the condition of the roads. We have the persons who cultivate rice driving tractors and combines that are damaging the roads. Other than that, life in Liverpool is good, it’s beautiful.’

Derrick Adams- Electrician
‘I am from Ulverston and I think the roads and drains are the main problems. All the drains are full of bushes and they need to be cleaned. The streets them full of potholes and we don’t have many street lights. All of these things they need to look into. During the rainy season the place is flooded. Life in Berbice is tough, job wise. People not finding jobs. The strong ones can go and cut cane but what about the older folks.’

 Monty Green- Cane cutter
‘The drains need to clean and the roads need to be done over because there’s too many potholes and cars and so don’t like coming through the streets in this area. We need more streetlights just to make the place more secure and so but apart from that, life in Berbice is rough. When the crop finish, you  gotta save your pieces because you gotta depend on the stocks, you don’t get work all year round.’

Keith Crawford- Cane Harvester
‘I’m an Ulverston resident and at this point in time we have some issues and one of them is flooding whenever it rains, that is one of the most burning issues we have right now. To a lesser extent, there are some blackouts. I feel like we are paying for a service that we are not getting and seeing that we are all field people, we have to get up very early in the morning and when there is blackout it affects us tremendously so we would like to see this improved in the very near future.’

Joe Tyndall
‘I live at Manchester and normally it’s the electricity that affects us. Every night we are getting blackout at this side. This happening for the longest while, sometimes two to three hours. The blackouts started even before the street lights went up in September last year.’

Winston Munroe- Rice Farmer
`In Liverpool, we have a drainage and irrigation problem. We don’t get a constant drainage service and when we come onto the rainy season, we have a major issue. We complain to D&I and we don’t get support in the matter. Now is not harvesting time but due to the flood we had in January, we can’t cultivate now in May like how we usually do so we end up losing. Another issue we have is the Hogstye/Manchester Community centre, this is the only centre within the area where the children can come and it needs to be filled because with any simple rain, it does get flooded so there’s no proper recreation centre for the youths in this area. Apart from those issues, I would say life in Berbice is normally tough because most of us depend on GuySuCo or the rice industry and if none of them pay us no mind, then we don’t have anything proper to make.’

Sundarall Ketwaroo- Rice Farmer
`The situation in Berbice real good, we have no problem except during the floods because we are affected here in Liverpool. The people in authority need to do more for rice farmers because there are special people who are given seed paddy and farmers are not getting it.’

Odetta Gray- Teacher
`The main thing I feel that is affecting Berbicians right now is unemployment for youths because there’s a lot of persons out there with CXC subjects that can’t get jobs at present so you find them walking the streets idly since they have nothing useful to do.’

 Hazel Leitch
‘The drainage is affecting us a lot because I have a garden and when it rains is everything under water. We would like the people in authority to look after the drainage problem. We are also trying to cope in the village with these young people because these couple days we’ve had robberies in the area. There’s a rise in the crime rate and maybe it stems from the unemployment issue. Otherwise, life in Berbice is quiet and I think we need more activities for the young people because nothing don’t really go on in the community centre.’

 Mark Ally- Vendor
‘The problem is that we getting water but it’s red, you can’t even wash your vehicle with it. When you full the water, it got oil, it brown and all sorts of things. I prefer to wash my vehicle with trench water because you don’t get the redness. After all that, you still got to pay the water rates although the water is of no use.’