Old school building allowed to deteriorate

Dec 22, 2012 News

Denita Jeffrey and Elroy Adolph are continuing to seek approval for the use of the old Kwakwani Secondary School building (in background)

– NGO begs for permission to rehabilitate facility for community use

The Kwakwani Youth Developers, a group of young people from the Berbice River mining community, is not too happy that it is being denied approval to make “positive and developmental” use of a building that is not now in use and continues to deteriorate.
The group has been in existence for just about two years and has reportedly made numerous contributions to their community, including creating and maintaining a library that is accessible to all residents of Kwakwani “but mostly made use of by the children.”
However, Executive Member of the club, Elroy Adolph, has said that “there is a brighter vision for the organization. With the help of Trevor Williams, an AFC Member of Parliament, and other members of the community, we would have repaired that building and turned it into a multi-purpose centre. However, authorities have been giving us the royal runaround for a long time now.”
Trevor Williams said that there were plans for the upper flat of the building to be utilized for meeting purposes and space to facilitate workshops from Georgetown Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs), while the lower flat would have housed a “training centre” where youths would have been taught to sew, mechanical techniques and “other useful trades.”
Notwithstanding the fact that these plans were reflected in official letters written to the Regional Educational Officer, the building was not approved to be handed over.
This newspaper understands that the building, which previously housed the Kwakwani Secondary School, was abandoned in 2001 after a Social Impact Amelioration Programme SIMAP built another school, in the same compound as a gift to the community.
Reports are that the building was to be demolished. However, demolition works were called off after the residents asked to make use of the building.
Adolph told this newspaper that after the group “started making progress in the community, we moved to start finalizing the process, then all of a sudden we were told that we can no longer get the building without a decent, ‘why’. The building continues to sit there and deteriorate.”
He said that the community is having an increasing number of school dropouts “and most of them go into mining but they all can’t do that, so we would like to create an opportunity for them to have options and we must deal with literacy in the community.”
Adolph and another Executive Member of the club, Denita Jeffrey, have been working closely with Williams on community projects.
Jeffrey noted that Digicel has furnished the library with books and a computer, “all of which we are very grateful for because there is no other library in the community.”
The UNDP has also, through Williams, sent a quantity of materials for the children to work with.
Williams told Kaieteur News that plans are being made to acquire a plot of land in the community; “but it would have been better for them to get access to the building for immediate purposes because persons in the community are willing to pool resources as they recognize a need for such a facility.”