With El Jardín they play tingo, tango

Liliana Cardona Marín

47 years is more than a lifetime, if one thinks of the people who raised this city freehand and with decent work. This is how the inhabitants of the second stage of the El Jardín neighborhood are, they are mostly pensioners who, if before they cared about the environment, now with more time, have turned it into their workhorse.

This community is so organized that it is one of the few in Pereira where you don’t see the piles of garbage on the corners. They even have a civic committee, but before the municipal administration, politicians and Aguas y Aguas, little is worth any effort.

The actual situation

Seven badly counted months from the National and Paranational Games, not only the harshness of the sports venues is a cause for general concern, but also the access roads. The community of this neighborhood wonders if the conditions of the road near the Olympic Village have been improved, why not in El Jardín, if the traffic of large buses with people from another city who come to visit the Parque Metropolitano del Café is constant for many years.

The tangent exit is then that is what Calle 50 is for, but what has not been taken into account until now is that it is not traffic that circulates, but buses with delegations that must park while the athletes descend or ascend of them and that this road that goes from Los Cedros, to the entrance to the Park, will be shared not only with the orange buses, but with those that come from Altagracia, plus the school routes of three schools that are in the sector. Not to think about it?

Same thing from other neighborhoods

“We already have the politician who is going to manage us in the mayor’s office”, that is the common response of the inhabitants with problems to be solved in the neighborhoods of Pereira, when they are asked what they have answered to the petition and it is also that Juan Carlos (former secretary of Infrastructure) promised us this and that, but Milton (the current secretary) says that he will see if it can start at the end of April or in May.

In El Jardín II stage, it is the same. First they were told that the main and only street they have to go in and out of could not be fixed, because the sewage system had to be replaced and that was the responsibility of Aguas y Aguas. Later, those from the aqueduct company arrived and inserted a probe, with which they verified that the pipe, despite being almost five decades old, was still in good condition and that it was already a matter of the Infrastructure Secretariat and at this point they return to the work of the politician who manages some response or intervention.

The Garden II stage

When these types of neighborhoods were designed with pedestrian streets, the idea was that there would be a space for outdoor parking as a common area and on a certain occasion, at the time of the gubernatorial elections, as Rubén Darío Dussán remembers, they shared a piece of it that serves blocks 10 and 12, the promise at that time was that in the second semester (they were not told what year) they would do the other part, “They never do anything complete,” he points out.

This citizen also comments that one December, when they laid a few meters of footprints to cross through the green area towards the houses on block 10, the engineer sent by the mayor’s office told him: “We have to spend this money and that is why we are doing this job ”.

Óscar Quiceno, another prominent member of this community, who is part of the new Community Action Board, expressed: “Maya in the campaign, came into my house and we talked about the issue of the road, later as mayor we talked to him again that to do it at the beginning of 2022”, when the breach occurred, the neighbors asked him again ‘Q’habó Óscar, what happened?’, he replied that after the middle of the year and in December he had to tell them what he had they told him ‘suddenly they do it next year’.

The only question this community has is how long? A neighbor adds “it’s shameful, not a single leaf falls here without the authorization of a politician” and another finishes off. Weren’t those large gates that the Park has made for vehicles to pass to 50? Why are they never open?

Give them complete

The absence of the Secretary of Social and Political Development in the city is so marked that old boards, such as the one in this neighborhood, have the luxury of not handing over property for work in five months and they do it little by little, because they are knowing that there is no one to call them to order.

What do you have to say about the situation?

Rubén Darío Dussán – neighbor of the sector

“Here there is no money, there is nothing. They have only come twice in 10-15 years, when it is election time and we are always worse off that way”.

Guillermo Gómez – Vice President JAC

“In four years of this mayoralty it has not been possible and three years ago we managed as a civic committee and neither. We also need a headquarters for Communal Action and the repair of the sports unit that is in abandonment”.

Óscar Quiceno – prosecutor of the JAC

“The reconstruction of this road was a promise of the mayor Maya in the campaign, but he no longer answers my cell phone, nor the messages from three phones that he left me in the campaign.”

Cipher

$7,000 million is the estimate that the community has for the cost of this intervention.

Given

The neighbors ask the Mobility Institute to please send guards to bring order to the routes, but especially to parents who park where it provokes them while they drop off or pick up their children and cause traffic chaos. Or failing that, that a school patrol be formed.