Residents and Vendors Call for Resolution to Neighbourhood Issues in Dover, Christ Church | Barbados TODAY

As far as resident and community activist Adrian Donovan is concerned, the main issue is garbage collection.

He said the foul odour from the pile-ups was hurting vendors’ business as it was turning off tourists.

“People from all over the area come and dump, and it is making the community look bad. The vendors are greatly affected because of the smell leading to tourists refusing to come. When it rains, the place is a mess, and there are one or two areas that the vagrants have taken over and that needs to be addressed,” Donovan lamented.

President of the Dover Square 247 Association, Roslyn Wilkinson, said the 13 stall owners in the area also believe the facilities need to be properly cleaned and maintained and the trees trimmed. They further called for an end to people hanging their wash on the fence enclosing the area.

“Some [homeless persons] sleep on the benches, so when the tourists come in, they tend to harass the tourists. But other than that, I don’t have any problems with them, period. I just want Dover to be Dover. I am looking to uplift Dover and the vendors in the square, and I will not stop until I achieve it,” Wilkinson said.

Meanwhile, 1st Avenue Dover resident Loreto Duffy-Mayers complained that residents have a major issue with noise pollution, which often results from events being held in the vendors’ area.

She said not only were residents finding out about the events at late notice but the problem of cars parking in and blocking residents’ driveways had reached unacceptable levels.

“We don’t think that certain events are suitable for the area as they tend to attract groups of people, and we find at the end that cars are broken into and people’s things are taken from their yards and their galleries. We find damage to cars and stuff like that,” Duffy-Mayers said.

“The area is so small that we don’t have the facilities to have the events. Now we did get a warning when they had Baje to De World, and it was very well managed. But when they have events here, and we only find out about them on the days they are happening, it is a scramble for residents to get into their homes. We have had issues where people just park in people’s driveways. We need to get advanced notice of when events are happening.”

President of the Oistins Bay Garden Inc. Kemar Harris said he was in the process of forming an umbrella association for vendors that rent from the NCC, including those at Dover and Rockley, Christ Church.

“It is important that we speak with one voice because, in some way or fashion, all of us encounter the same experience. So what was spoken about this morning as it relates to NCC and Dover, I can relate because we at Oistins actually went through that before,” he said.

When contacted, President of the Barbados Alliance to End Homelessness (BAEH) Kemar Saffrey said his organisation had assessed the issues of suspected drug abusers creating issues at Dover and Oistins.

He said homeless people who used drugs were attracted to those areas because of easy access to their preferred substances, and it was difficult for his organisation to intervene because “they are more aggressive”.

Saffrey said law enforcement officers, health authorities, and other stakeholders need to get involved in the process of getting those persons institutionalised.

“Every player has to be on board to make this happen. I find that people think that the Barbados Alliance to End Homelessness is the only solution to homelessness. While we are here to provide the programmes, we are not a psychiatric hospital, we are not a drug treatment facility. Those facilities are already available, we just need everybody to come together to address this situation,” the BAEH president said.

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