So what is government going to do? Well it is in the lap of Area Representative Eden Martinez. He took a team of government experts to monkey river yesterday where they came up with a temporary fix.
Hon. Eden Martinez, Toledo East Area Rep.
“Immediately though in terms of short term, the personnel from the Ministry of Works have stated that they wanted to look at a type of palm which they want to bring in and then use tires to develop a barrier about 500 feet into the water and that in itself, the idea is to contain the sand and in fact to build up so we can reclaim the land that has been eroded over a period of time.
In the medium term, I think what we are looking at is to discuss with those agencies, the agricultural industries, banana farms. Villagers have indicated and from a study conducted by Galen there has been an interruption of the flow of the Swasey River and as a consequence of the flow of the water, it is not allowing enough sand to come out to monkey river so. So those are some areas and of course the long term is to look at policy in terms of the water forward.”
A pro-tem committee has been formed and its first meeting is next week. The committee will be tasked to devise a long term plan. While dredging is a possible fix – because of the cost involved – that is highly unlikely. Again Monkey River only has 190 residents but it was once a bustling town with close to 3,000 residents. That was at the peak of the banana industry. When it crashed – many of the residents moved away and in 1981 it was downgraded to just a village.
