Communities in NW Manchester to receive electricity
Published:Wednesday | May 29, 2013 | 12:00 AM
PLEDGING TO provide electricity to at least one community, each year, over the next four years, member of parliament for North West Manchester Mikael Phillips announced recently that residents of Adams Valley in the parish, received electricity for the first time in more than 150 years.
Phillips told his parliamentary colleagues that Adams Valley was the first free village in Manchester with about 120 residents living in the community.
A survey done by the Rural Electrification Programme (REP) showed that 12 communities in the North West Manchester constituency had no electricity. It will cost approximately $82 million to get households in these communities on the Jamaica Public Service electricity grid.
Pledge
However, the MP gave an undertaking that "by the end of my second term" all the communities surveyed by the REP would have electricity.
Phillips noted that other communities that would have electricity, this year, for the first time, include Free Town in Hibernia, Balm Hill in Mike Town, Angel Land in Mayfield and Brooklyn in Evergreen.
Phillips has also set another target for this year, that of replacing all pit latrines in all schools in North West Manchester.
"At the Medinea Primary School, before the new school year starts in September 2013, we will be removing the pit toilets and replacing them with new water closets," said the first-time MP, who noted that the project would be done with the assistance of Food for the Poor.
Commenting on the quality of educational instruction at the early childhood level, Phillips urged the Government to accelerate the placement of more trained teachers in basic schools.
Early chilhood education
"We need to get our schools up to the standard that when a child leaves an early childhood institution, he or she can read, write and comprehend the basic requirements of the grade one curriculum."
He argued that the country was spending approximately $25 billion on remedial education in schools, compared with the national spend of a little under $5 billion on early childhood education.
"The business of early childhood education is too important a sector for us not to pay more attention to. I am certain that if we get it right with early childhood, we will see better literacy and numeracy results coming out of our schools," Phillips con-tended.