Shanty towns throughout New Providence are set to be demolished due to major health and infrastructural concerns.
Parliamentary Secretary in the Ministry of Health, Ron Pinder along with officers of his ministry spoke with the press yesterday on the site of a small shanty village off Joe Farrington Road where the houses were being dismantled.
“We commenced this exercise sometime around October of last year. We have 39 of these makeshift villages in New Providence and the Department of Environmental Health Services has already demolished nine of them, said Mr Pinder.
Mr. Pinder said that contrary to popular belief, the makeshift villages are not occupied by illegals only, as many feel that Haitians who are living here illegally make up the total number of residents in such villages.
“In this particular location we had 300 residents, 50% of which are either permanent residents or Bahamians, the other 35% are here on work permits and the remaining 15% are undocumented,” he said.
Mr. Pinder said that the major concern in these types of communities is the gross unsanitary conditions.
It is said that the residents would dispose of personal human waste in nearby bushes, which left an unbearable stench for the homes neighbouring the village.
“In these communities, they have no proper bathroom facilities and no running water, so what they do is they use the bushes. Sometimes the people who live nearby call complaining that they cannot open their windows because of the smell,” said Simone Bodie of Environmental Health.
He said that such complaints usually lead into a land search by the department to find who owns the property.
“When I find out who owns the property, I would then serve a health order on the owner, giving him a specific time to implement adequate infrastructure or giving residents a time frame for them to move.”
“We gave them 90 days to relocate. Because of the time spent in The Bahamas, they would have family elsewhere on the island,” said Mr Pinder.
He said that it is very important for the public to understand that while executing any policy, the governmentmust be sensitive to human conditions.
“The fact of the matter is you simply can’t root people up out of their homes but you have to give them some reasonable amount of time to relocate,” he continued.
He said the operation was a very expensive one to carry out and said that the owner of the property was very cooperative in handling half of the cost to clear the site, while the government funded the other half.
Two houses still stand on the site that Mr. Pinder says will either be sold as a whole plot of land or as individual plots. It is said that the residents were given a grace period to find living accommodations elsewhere.
By: VIRAJ PERPALL, The Nassau Guardian
