Riverland Employment Projects

With new employment projects taking place, it is believed that the community of Riverland, an area in Australia, will finally have more success finding the work and necessary employment that they are in need of. Many of the families in and around the area of Gerard have had to move and migrate to other areas in hopes of finding work as work has been scarce. It is believed that some of the people who have not been able to find employment are now using drugs and alcohol as means of coping with their current situation, according to ABC News 24.

The vice-chairman of the Gerard Council, Hartley Lindsay, has said, “It’s a slippery slope, once you start down there it’s sort of hard to get back on top of the hill.” He hopes that the employment projects that are being built will hopefully help some of these people to get off of their slippery slope and eventually find the employment that they have searched so hard to find. Such employment projects include upgrading the cemetery in Gerard and planting trees.

Lindsay says, “The cemetery hadn’t been done for a long time. It was sort of degrading and a lot of the graves from the rain was getting big holes and so the program was to beautify the cemetery and fix all the graves up and landscape around the place.” He also says, “In between that at the moment we’re planting trees. We’ve got about 700 trees and we’re planting them around Gerard, sort of more shade and [to] beautify.” Lindsay says that other projects aside from the cemetery project will be created. He says, “They’re doing a willow tree project where they are ripping up along the river banks anything that is not indigenous to the area.”

Lindsay says that building these employment projects is a way to help people of the community find work and it gives them something to do along with a sense of pride because they are actually able to work. When speaking of the local community members, Lindsay says, “ You only have to look in their eyes when they’re working, [it] gives them that self respect.” He also says, “”People are starting to take pride in themselves, my teams are right on schedule, if not a bit ahead of schedule. I’ve got to slow them down sometimes.”

One of the local community members, Philip Johnson, speaks about how he had to leave the area of Gerard to find work elsewhere. Eventually, he was able to find work with the employment project, working to upgrade the cemetery and its appearance. Johnson says, “Quite a few of us was all just mainly on the dole, had nothing to look forward to, but now since we started this project we’ve got something looking forward to.”