Maintenance crew for May Pen cemetery

A MAINTENANCE crew of about 12 is soon to be deployed inside the May Pen Cemetery to ensure the largest burial site in the Corporate Area is kept free of the weed and brush that has overgrown most of the tombs in the 80-acre graveyard in recent years.

Ahead of the crew being deployed, the cemetery, which was selected as the Labour Day project for the Corporate Area by the Kingston and St. Andrew Corporation (KSAC), was bushed and cleaned by large groups of volunteers.

They included the custodes for Kingston and St. Andrew (KSAC), Canon Weeville Gordon and Rev. Carmen Stewart along with members of their congregations; Member of Parliament for the area, Edward Seaga; Kingston's Mayor, Marie Atkins, Town Clerk Errol Greene and Councillor for the area, Desmond McKenzie. Volunteers from the Social Development Commission (SDC) were also on hand to give a facelift to the facility which was extensively cleaned between December and January as part of the Lift Up Jamaica programme.

"We are going to be putting a maintenance crew in place immediately after the Labour Day work is completed," the Town Clerk said. He said the idea was to divide the 12, who will be employed on a retainer basis, into smaller groups so all areas of the property are taken care of.

Mayor Atkins, who acted as chairman of the Labour Day committee for the Corporate Area, said the KSAC would ensure the maintenance gang was in place by next week.

"This is to ensure that it constantly looks good as we do not want it to get to the deplorable state it was in recent years," she said of the cemetery.

"We recognised many people have relatives buried here and we feel this is a very important part of the history of our parish," said Rev. Carmen Stewart. The co-chairman of the Labour Day committee for Kingston and St. Andrew (KSAC) said yesterday's clean-up exercise went well and the turnout was good.

According to Mr. McKenzie, more than 400 people who carried out the initial bushing between December and the end of January under the Lift Up Jamaica programme must be given credit for a job well done.

"In order to appreciate the conditions of the cemetery you had to be associated with the problems to know what it was like before," he said adding there has been tremendous improvement.

Under the programme, more than $7 million was spent to clear the shrubs in the cemetery after its rundown condition was highlighted in the media.

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