PRIME MINISTER OWEN ARTHUR says he will continue to develop St Peter not only into one of the best places in Barbados, but as a showpiece to the world.

Speaking to a crowd who waited for him past the midnight hour in Speightstown on Wednesday – as he had three other speaking engagements – Arthur gave an account of his stewardship in the parish since 1984 – from housing, road improvement, and educational drives, to employment.

The Barbados Labour Party's (BLP) St Peter candidate said there were still many projects on the cards, including the completion of two "that will be the future of the tourism industry".

They were the retirement village at The Lakes in Mount Brevitor, which he said was the first of such in the Caribbean with $600 million invested, and another taking place in Black Bess.

Arthur said these, and others like the proposed fisheries facility and lagoon for Six Men's, would enhance his beloved "home".

"I want to bring more jobs to St Peter. I want Speightstown to be fully transformed," he said.

"Before I leave, I don't want a manjack in St Peter to be unemployed," he stressed.

And,he said Speightstown, once in a derelict state, was now so transformed that there were two cities in the world that had adopted
it as their twin – Reading in England and South Carolina in the United States.

"I am bringing the world to my constituency, to let them see what really a constituency must look like."

He said with a campus of the Barbados Hospitality Institute now at All Saints, and a vocational training centre and a nursery school being opened in the parish, educational needs were being met like never before.

And Arthur said he wasn't finished.

Other projects to start soon involve having Queen Street transformed and beautified similar to St Lawrence Gap in Christ Church, and Fort Denmark into a cruise tourism destination.

He departed with these words: "I leave you, and I can't tell you I will get to every place in St Peter. I would love every night to be down here talking to you, but I have a whole government to bring home . . . . I leave you only with the message that I go to prepare a place for you, and I will come again to take you unto myself, that where I am, there you shall be also." (BW)