Pastor Urilene Springer and her husband Clyde want to know how their “beautiful and well maintained” home came to be listed among the demolition of derelict buildings advertised by the Environmental Protection Department (EPD) last week.
An upset Pastor Springer said she was shocked last Thursday when she saw her home at King Street, St Simon’s, St Andrew, which she has lived in for 55 years listed to be demolished on March 20.
“I sent my husband to the supermarket and the spirit just tell me to tell him to pick up a newspaper. I was on the machine doing some work and he bring the paper and put it in front of me. I said to myself, I ain’t got no time to read the paper. Then the spirit said to me, like a human being talking to me, pick up that paper and check it. So when I open it, it opened right in the middle and I saw a government notice demolishing buildings and I continued to read the names and then I saw me and my husband’s names. I started to laugh and I ask who could give the nation this information?”
Springer recalled that last October a woman came to her house and indicated that she was doing a survey.
“She said she would like to know the names of the adults in the home and I gave her my name and my husband’s name but when I went to give her my daughter’s name, she said ‘the two of you is alright’. I found that strange because she asked for the names of the adults who live here and my daughter is 32. She is the only body that come to me.”
Springer said she also spotted other properties in the neighbourhood which were unoccupied and dilapidated, including two in front of her house where the owners had passed away and which were being managed by relatives, who did not live in the area.
The pastor pointed out that she saw the Bethany Baptist Church at Haggatts, St Andrew which is still in operation and was recently renovated also listed.
“I called up the pastor and told them to look into the newspaper because the church is there to be destroyed.”
Springer questioned how someone could visit her home and determined that it was derelict.
“From November last year to January this year I painted this house. I realised that it had a small leak and I changed 40 galvanised sheets on the roof. I don’t let my home go down. We work too hard for this. So if anything want changing, we change it. So I didn’t take no chances,” she said of her two-storey home which also has the family church next door which is also in pristine condition.
The 77-year-old Springer said she also tried to contact her attorney about the matter as it had offset her and her husband.
“My husband suffers with hypertension and he had an appointment with the doctor the next day and I am a diabetic. So to see these kind of things published in the NATION newspaper it means that you’ll get a bad report. I got to get this rectified. They got to do things the right way.
“Even if this home was breaking down and we choose to live in it that’s our choice,” Springer said.
“From the time they [the woman] get out there they would see a beautiful home. The devil want to destroy it. He got another thing coming.”
The DAILY NATION was unable to reach the director of the EPD. However when contacted Minister Adrian Forde under whose Ministry the agency falls advised Springer to contact the EPD office.
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