The fast-developing Six Roads location in St Philip is an ideal area for national infrastructural development, says Barbados Labour Party (BLP) political leader, Mia Mottley.
Speaking at a BLP meeting there Friday night on an unoccupied spot to the west of popular fast food restaurant Chefette, Mottley said the venue was earmarked for civic buildings when the then Owen Arthur-led government demitted office in 2008.
“We were going to move the Police station from District “C”. We were going to put all the Government services so that you in Six Roads would have everything compact here because we believe that Six Roads has to be the centre for a new town and industrial corridor in this country,” Mottley declared.
“Ten years have gone and the only thing you can find on this site is old cane roads to break your foot and you going tell me that they care about you,” she declared.
“I am saying to you that this site should’ve long had the Civic Complex and if the Government does not have the money to do it, they are other forms of negotiations that could’ve made it happen,” she suggested.
The five-time St Michael North East parliamentary representative also castigated the DLP government for the purported labour allocation agreement with China in relation to the restoration of Sam Lords Castle.
“People in St Philip are looking for work and they go and agree with the Chinese to allow 60 per cent of the labourers on that site to be chinese workers,” she charged.
“I don’t have anything against the Chinese but I have everything in favour for Bajans who need work,” she pointed out.
Mottley also queried the number of Philippians who have been given a housing lot by former Minister of Housing and Lands, Michael Lashley, the three-time DLP parliamentary representative for St Philip North.
“But he gave one man 2 900 lots at Bushy Park through the National Housing Corporation in the election period,” she claimed.
She further inquired about the status of the Six Roads School Meals centre.
“That project was planned long time. Work started. Why is it not finished. Why is it not a priority? Why hasn’t it gone forward like the others?” she questioned.
She said an engineer may have to go and make an inspection.
“The conditions under which we been labouring with the School Meals Department have not changed because this is years now and the building isn’t done,” she reiterated.
Mottley also disclosed she had visited Ruby Tenantry with the BLP’s St Philip South candidate Indar Weir, earlier in the week and was shocked at her findings.
“When I see simple things that can be resolved in this country, it is like the people also in Welches, St John, where Government owns lands. How do you sit down for a decade and don’t regularise the status of people on that land?” asked Mottley.
“How do you let people build shanties that don’t have water, light, toilet and then you tell me it is okay?” (EZS)
