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Oct 27, 2014 News
An agricultural expert says he has a cost-effective plan to keep Le Repentir Cemetery permanently clear of the vegetation that had turned the historic site into an eyesore.
The expert is Mr. Martin Lopez, an agronomist from Caribbean Chemicals Limited that the Ministry of Local Government has retained to assist with the $100M rehabilitation project.
Prison inmates and contract workers have put in weeks of intense labour to clear the cemetery of large trees and other vegetation.
But a recent visit to the cemetery by Kaieteur News revealed that literally hundreds of tree stumps remained in already-cleared areas.
Minister of Local Government Norman Whittaker told Kaieteur News that the workers were forced to leave several tree stumps intact, since uprooting them would have resulted in erosion and damage to some tombs.
And this is where Martin Lopez’s plan comes in.
The agronomist has suggested the spraying of herbicides to rid the cemetery of this vegetation. According to the expert, the herbicides would cause the stumps to rot and they can be eventually removed without damaging tombs or the risk of erosion.
In addition, he suggested that herbicides could be sprayed in the site occasionally to prevent the re-growth of unsightly vegetation.
“This is much more cost-effective than trying to uproot the stumps (and running the risk of damaging the tombs),” Lopez said.
In August, the Ministry of Local Government and Regional Development contracted the Guyana Prison Service and Jeffery Jones Construction to clean the cemetery. Under the $100M “Clean-Up My Country” programme, the cemetery’s access roads will also be rehabilitated and drains de-silted.
The first phase of the clean-up commenced on August 4, where the Guyana Beekeeping Association removed several hives from the cemetery.
City Hall and Government have blamed each other for the unsightly state of Le Repentir, with City Hall officials claiming that they were never provided with adequate funds for the cemetery’s upkeep.
“I would have liked that we never reached that stage, where we would not have had to have prisoners to clean the cemetery,” Mr. Whittaker had told Kaieteur News recently.
“I would rather that we had all taken interest in keeping the cemetery clean.”
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