Jacqueline Lloyd intended to spend Monday celebrating her 61st birthday, but it rained on her parade.
Instead, she found herself cleaning out her waterlogged, dilapidated house for several hours and wondering where she was going to lay her weary head.
“I am depressed,” she said, looking at several buckets, filled with dirty water, which she was forced to place throughout her small wooden house during the many hours of rainfall Sunday night.
Lloyd, who lives in Villa Road, Brittons Hill, St Michael, lamented that everything she did to make herself comfortable in the house for Christmas, such as new curtains, sheets and foodstuff, was damaged when the rain poured in through the old ceiling.
Choking back tears, the mother of two, who was previously featured in the NATION pleading for assistance to have her house rebuilt, said the house in which she has lived for the past 27 years, had deteriorated to the extent where it had become uninhabitable.
She said that on Sunday night, as she was kneeling on the floor praying, the rain started to “tumble down”.
“I had to run and get buckets and all through the night I throwing out water from the buckets because they were filling up fast.”
Pointing to her small twin bed, Lloyd said she tried to position it so it would not get wet, but that proved futile and she was forced to lie in the foetal position on the rain-soaked bed.
“I used to go to Urban (Urban Development Commission) back and forth. Urban come and they say it can’t repair, so they would have to rebuild the entire house.”
She said the commission further informed her that because of the small size of the land, it would have to build a bigger property for her and her daughter who lives next door. However, Lloyd said she rejected the offer because she and her daughter were estranged and involved in a legal matter.
However, she said there were several vacant spots of land in the Brittons Hill area which Government owned and on which she was told by different Government officials that a house would be constructed for her.
“When the Chinese came out here and built the first steel house, they come and tell me that I will get a house too,” but that never materialised, she said.
Lloyd said she had been in contact with parliamentary representative for St Michael South Central, Marsha Caddle, recalling that Caddle visited her during an incoming storm earlier this year and made arrangements for her to go to a shelter.
“She tell me that she didn’t want me to get hurt, but after the storm, you mean you never check back?”
Pointing to rashes and several cuts about her body, Lloyd said she got them from insects in the house while galvanised sheeting was constantly falling from the ceiling and cutting her.
“All of my skin does be itching me. You can see the termites crawling all over the house,” she said, adding that she also did not have a waterborne toilet.
“I went to Marsha (Caddle) about three weeks ago and she told me she submit my case as a priority.
I am a Bajan and all kinds of people coming to Barbados and getting houses but I can’t get no help,” said Lloyd, who pointed out that she works every other week for the National Conservation Commission cutting grass along the streets. She said this was preventing her from being able to rent a room as she only received $520 every two weeks.
When contacted, Caddle said: “I prioritised Miss Lloyd with the Urban Development Commission, who similarly prioritised her case. And what she has said is true, that this plot is too small to rebuild
a completely new house.
“And Urban said to her, ‘We will build something larger for you that other family members who also are in need of housing solutions can benefit from’. And she said no. She said that the Government cannot tell her who to live with.
“Now, as would always happen, and I have to give credit to the officers at Urban, they tried their best to accommodate people’s wishes and the ways in which they wish to live. But she had to be re-enlisted for that reason because there wasn’t an immediate individual solution for her at the time.”
She added: “I am aware that she is on a list for another project.”
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