Park and Playground Hazardous

By Nadine Thomas –Brown

There is a song by Ziggy Marley and the Melody Makers part of which goes, “ children playing in the streets, on broken bottles and rubbish heaps”. The song was a commentary about the state of ghettos as it related to children who had to grow up in less than acceptable environments.

In the Bahamas on any given day of the week, school kids and preschoolers, as well as their parents, whether from the inner city or otherwise, put themselves in similar situations. They do this by going to parks which for the most part have seemingly been left to maintain themselves.

Lately while other offending parks have tried to clean up their act- through community organizations- Goodman’s Bay Park whose -grounds due in part to the large traffic of public visitors- has become a veritable dumping ground. Any day of the week garbage may be found throughout the park extending all the way into the children’s playground. Plastic bottles and wrappers from food containers as well as other unmentionable objects -often times left over from whatever illicit activity took place the night before- litter the park.

Meanwhile the children’s playground has become akin to what one parent, called an “obstacle course of hazards”. The fragile looking rusted swings- a great draw to kids and adults of all ages- groan with fright every time they are pushed sky high into the air with their tiny or not so tiny passengers. The see- saw has lost it’s balance and teeters from side to side every time it is boarded. In the meantime the huge slide-the biggest hazard of all- waits to savage little kids with it’s huge jagged teeth which protrudes from a huge break at the mouth from which they descend after sliding down at breakneck speed.

Ironically this park sits at one of the more prestigious ends of town leading into the Cable Beach strip. Tourists can be seen milling about mixing with the natives throughout the week.

Other parks though such as those adopted by private business enterprises seem to be thriving, for example the Kerzner International sponsored, Montague Park in the eastern district is for the most part well maintained. Even though the odd bit of waste from time to time lying next to an empty recepticle is somewhat disturbing.

Meanwhile officials were stumped on the question of who was responsible for maintaining the playground equipments in government owned areas. The Guardian was told to call Environmental health, who then passed the buck to The Ministry of youth who passed it to the Ministry of Works and back and forth went the beureocratic red tape.

Finally, Hilton Solomon- Field Supervisor zone 5 –Department of Environmental Health, who has held that post for the past three weeks, according to him, said that while Environmental Health was responsible for maintaining park grounds he thought that the Ministry of Youth dealt with playground equipment.

As to what was to be done about the accumulation of garbage in parks, Solomon said that cleanup of all parks and beaches had already commenced. Though the call was still out on a cleanup of users of the park’s attitudes towards helping to maintain the cleanliness of it.

“If you notice now we are just now trying to do some work. Grounds will be cleaned there are changes and we are not moving as fast, but trees have been trimmed paths whitewashed, sand cleared etc. and we are going to have an ongoing maintenance of all parks and beaches which will be cleaned every day,” Solomon said.

“Some of the problems that we were having there included a lot of parties on the weekends. We want to meet with some of the citizens including the Jet Ski association to find out solutions”.

Meanwhile Ambrose-Walker-Deputy Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Youth Sports and culture redirected the call to Chris Thompson a Public Administrator in the Ministry of Works to answer the who is in charge of maintaining the parks playgrounds question.

Thompson said that technically the Ministry of works would be responsible for “things like that but there are certain play equipment that have been donated and we do not maintain those as it would be those persons responsibility to maintain them”. The Ministry of works he explained was responsible for “anything that was on public space, the use of public space and the maintenance and upkeep of public rest rooms.”

What if the equipment for the playground was posing a threat? Thompson paused here to seek assistance and again insisted that the Ministry of Youth and Sports would be able to answer this question.

When Permanent Secretary Walker was again contacted he said because of the murkiness as to who was responsible. He would take it on himself to send someone to address the problem and find out which Ministry to send the bill to.