Dear Editor,
The need to build a proper health centre befitting human dignity for residents of Golden Spring and its environs in West Rural St Andrew long outdates the first formal request for funding made to the Jamaica Social Investment Fund (JSIF) in 2004.
The existing facility, a Type One clinker board and infested hovel of a clinic, needed overhaul soon after its creation in the early 70s.
JSIF has now demonstrated that it has all in place under a Basic Needs Programme to fund a new facility with the residents. This offer for funding by JSIF has been on the table for some time now, but they have indicated that if there is no execution of the project soon, then the funds will be redirected.
In the meantime, it seems that a bureaucratic problem has developed between the Kingston and St Andrew Health Department, South East Regional Health Authority, and the Kingston and St Andrew Corporation, the latter indicating a no-go until it gets a formal agreement to collect land rental for the government-owned land on which the existing facility is located.
While time slips perilously by and the JSIF ultimatum looms, the mostly female residents of 12 adjoining communities which the facility serves "suck salt" in a building which is a nightmare for them all. Will some kind person bring this letter to the attention of Prime Minister Portia Simpson Miller?
Derrick Simon
President
Golden Spring Citizens' Association
St Andrew
Health centre nightmare
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The need to build a proper health centre befitting human dignity for residents of Golden Spring and its environs in West Rural St Andrew long outdates the first formal request for funding made to the Jamaica Social Investment Fund (JSIF) in 2004.
The existing facility, a Type One clinker board and infested hovel of a clinic, needed overhaul soon after its creation in the early 70s.
JSIF has now demonstrated that it has all in place under a Basic Needs Programme to fund a new facility with the residents. This offer for funding by JSIF has been on the table for some time now, but they have indicated that if there is no execution of the project soon, then the funds will be redirected.
In the meantime, it seems that a bureaucratic problem has developed between the Kingston and St Andrew Health Department, South East Regional Health Authority, and the Kingston and St Andrew Corporation, the latter indicating a no-go until it gets a formal agreement to collect land rental for the government-owned land on which the existing facility is located.
While time slips perilously by and the JSIF ultimatum looms, the mostly female residents of 12 adjoining communities which the facility serves "suck salt" in a building which is a nightmare for them all. Will some kind person bring this letter to the attention of Prime Minister Portia Simpson Miller?
Derrick Simon
President
Golden Spring Citizens' Association
St Andrew
Health centre nightmare
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