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Residents of Ivor St. fundraise to repair their street

FeaturesResidents of Ivor St. fundraise to repair their street

BELIZE CITY–Ivor Street lies deep in the north of the Lake Independence area, almost by the riverside, but when it rains, navigating the street is a nightmare for its residents, because the short street has no drainage and the potholes keep getting bigger.

Residents of the street have traditionally taken matters into their own hands and have done some of the work to improve the street on their own. In another two weeks, they will launch their street cleanup campaign.

Before the start of the cleanup, however, on Saturday, November 29, the residents of Ivor Street held a flea market inside Battlefield Park to raise funds to buy filling to repair their street.

Two of the residents of the street, Shasa Eiley and Jacqueline Meighan, told Amandala about their plans to tackle the street filling.

The flea market was a smashing success, Meighan said. In fact, they are planning to hold another one on December 20.

“We never depend on the government or anybody to fix our street; about ten years ago, we filled the street ourselves,” Eiley said.

Meighan explained that this has nothing to do with politics. “We have always been doing this sort of activity for years. We organize small events to help some of the children with school supplies during school time,” Meighan explained.

“We will buy some filling for the street for a temporary fix; because around this time of the year when it rains we have problems using the street,” said Meighan, adding, “the cost of a load of filling is around $600.”

“It’s just a temporary fix for us right now, because we know that the city of Belize has other priority streets right now”, said Meighan.

And just how did the name Ivor Street come about, Amandala asked.

“We named our street Ivor Street after the first resident who lived on the street, whose name was Ivor Cacho,” Meighan said.

She added that the name is recognized by everyone, except the Belize City Council, who has the street listed as “MR”.

“A group of us had written to the City Council about 15 years ago to have the name Ivor Street recognized,” Meighan said. “Other institutions like BTL and Belize Water Services recognize the name, because the name comes on our bills,” she noted.

Eiley and Meighan expressed the view that if everyone worked together in their communities, they could get a lot done in their neighborhoods without depending too much on the government to help them.

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