CONSTRUCTION OF THE LONG AWAITED $2.5 million headquarters for the Barbados Red Cross Society may start as soon as July and be completed by March 2009.

That is the hope of the director of SRM Architects, Tony Selby, who was contracted to build the 7 000-square-foot, two-storey building to be located adjacent to the Warren's Polyclinic in St Michael.

Yesterday at the fund appeal launch, director general Edmond Bradshaw said that since the 1999 fire at the Jemmotts Lane, St Michael headquarters there were a number of circumstances that delayed building a new one, including raising money for disasters like the destruction in Grenada and Asia.

"The secretariat operations became disjointed . . . with [its] office located in a very small space, kindly provided by the technical division in the Ministry of Health on Jemmotts Lane," he said.

In container

The Meals On Wheels programme, said Bradshaw, operated from the YWCA, while the ambulance service operated from Constitution Road, St Michael. Meanwhile, the disaster supplies were stored in a container behind Big B Supermarket in Christ Church and other items such as wheelchairs, clutches, canes and equipment were kept in a rusting container on the beach behind the Barbados Defence Force base.

Bradshaw also said that while there was no space for the Red Cross' telecommunications unit or fire relief supplies, CPR, first aid, HIV/AIDs and other training programmes were conducted in various locations.

Co-chairman Sir Allan Fields made the appeal to corporate Barbados to dig deep into its pockets to provide the additional $1.5 million towards the construction.

He said that despite the business community being inundated with requests for cash assistance from other charities, that the Barbados Red Cross relied mainly on covenants from the business sector.