Septic tank project launched in Port Loyola
While an exact number is uncertain, a drive through sections of the old capital provides more than enough evidence to prove that thousands of Belizeans live in severely impoverished conditions. Services the rest of us take for granted like running water, electricity, and even a toilet are a luxury in those neighbourhoods. But this afternoon, one politician launched an initiative that if successful, should vastly improve the lives of his constituents.
Janelle Chanona, Reporting
Many residents of the Jane Usher Boulevard neighbourhood live like Sharon Connor and her seven children … without the basic facility of a toilet.
Sharon Connor, Area Resident
“Well, I noh know how the rest of people deal with it but me, my kids, we use a bucket and that dah the way how I deal with it with my family.”
Janelle Chanona
“Weh you throw it?”
Sharon Connor
“Well I go way to the back, way to the back. We have to wait till like when mawning the come and then we dah go way to the back like old times day when you does use to go dah the canal, well dah that we do dah back yah.”
Across the street, Isabel Alvarez and her seven children have a toilet but no running water. They must use a bucket to fill this empty refrigerator with water from a public pipe nearby.
Janelle Chanona
“Dat dah fu drinking and everything you get the water for?”
Isabel Alvarez, Area Resident
“Fu the washing and drinking and everything inna one and the toilet.”
Janelle Chanona
“So you have to get water for all those things?”
Isabel Alvarez
“Yes mam.”
The unhealthy situation has alarmed Area Representative Anthony “Boots” Martinez.
Anthony “Boots” Martinez, Area Representative
“It is frightening to see people throwing waste in the bushes, dispose of waste and have waste in their houses. I think that is unethical, immoral and my fear, like weh I say, especially with the Southside Project coming on board a lot of the bushes will be gone, the canals they will be dug properly as such but in my view my main fear, Janelle, is that I fear epidemic breaking out due to the way how people dispose of faeces in the area.”
To offset the health hazard, today Martinez and the Port Loyola Social Services Organization launched the Community Septic Tank project. Using building materials donated by the business community, Martinez’s twelve man team will provide technical assistance to construct the tanks, while area residents will invest sweat equity in the form of the required unskilled labour.
Today residents, including Sharon Connor, signed up to participate in the project. Like many others, because of space constraints the tank will have to double as an outhouse.
Anthony “Boots” Martinez
“Cause they don’t have the space in the house even to facilitate a bathroom space so most of the septic tanks people will be putting houses on the top to facilitate as a outhouse because they too doesn’t have enough space inside the house to accommodate a bathroom space.”
Martinez estimates that in this neighbourhood alone, more than two hundred and forty people need a septic tank. Tonight he is calling on Belizeans to donate steel, cement, sand and gravel to the initiative.
Anthony “Boots” Martinez
“All of us have a responsibility, the community, myself as the representative, the government, the private sector also I think that sees too that where they can contribute to help other needy people.”
“The project will last until we are finished. I am happy right now to say that we definitely could start with forty-five septic tanks. And this morning I made an amount of calls and I think the material that will be coming in will facilitate us with about a next fifty or sixty more so it’s an ongoing project and it’s a project that we intend to undertake until we are finished.”
Application forms for the septic tank project are available at the Port Loyola Social Services Organization housed at Martinez’s office on Boots Crescent in Belize City. Reporting for News Five, I am Janelle Chanona.
Port Loyola is one of the largest political constituencies in Belize, with just over three thousand seven hundred registered voters.
