AN OPPOSITION PARLIAMENTARIAN wants this country to have a clear land use policy with fertile land being retained primarily for agricultural purposes.
Representative for St George South, Dwight Sutherland of the Barbados Labour Party (BLP) said he was concerned about what he termed good agricultural land in some areas of the constituency he represented being taken out of production for housing purposes.
Sutherland spoke to the issue last Friday while participating in a debate relating to a land acquisition at Sturges and Welchman Hall, St Thomas, for the Harrison Cave Redevelopment project.
He supported the measure.
He pinpointed areas at Boarded Hall and Lower Greys within the voting district of his constituency where land was being taken out of agriculture for house spots, a situation the Opposition MP said worried him because of the country’s high food import bill and the matter of food security.
“Why are we acquiring fertile agricultural land for housing purposes?” he asked, adding that contrary to some views, agricultural pursuits were lucrative, with the big problem for those in the sector being praedial larceny.
Speaking after Minister of Health and Leader of Government Business in the House of Assembly, John Boyce, who had described the Harrison’s Cave Redevelopment project as another of the “half-done works programmes” the Democratic Labour Party administration had inherited from the previous BLP administration, Sutherland raised a number of questions.
He asked what was the final cost of the roundabout built at Boarded Hall and what had happened to those houses which had been damaged during Tropical Storm Tomas which affected the island in 2010.
Sutherland said too, he was concerned about how many of those houses still had not been repaired or their owners compensated by Government.
He also attacked Government for the length of time it had taken on the roadworks being undertaken between Warrens and Redman’s Village, St Thomas. (ES)
