Submitted by DAVID COMISSIONG, Citizen of Barbados
Prime Minister Fruendel Stuart
So, Prime Minister Freundel Stuart chose an exclusive luncheon of the elite Barbados Chamber of Commerce to announce to an audience of business executives that he will be granting permission for Mr Mark Maloney to construct his proposed 15 storey hotel on Browne’s Beach!
Well, the fundamental questions I have for Mr Stuart are as follows:-
(1) When were the people – the ordinary Barbadian Citizens and residents – of the affected communities consulted by you or by the Town Planning Department that you have ministerial responsibility for, prior to your coming to this decision? (And I am referring here to the thousands of ordinary black working class Barbadians who reside in Wellington Street, Pondside, London Bourne Towers, and other surrounding residential areas, as well as to the thousands of Barbadians who religiously avail themselves of Browne’s Beach.)
(2) When did you or the applicant company, Visions Development Inc., hold even ONE Town Hall Meeting with the ordinary citizens of Barbados – particularly with residents of the nearby communities – so that you could be informed about their views, prior to your making this decision?
(3) Why is there such a record of your Administration time after time bending over backwards to confer all sorts of outrageously privileged contractual arrangements on Mr Mark Maloney or on companies that are controlled by the said Mark Maloney – Storage Solutions Limited (payment of rental fees in the sum of $2,150,000.00 per year over 20 years for the rental of 3 molasses storage tanks); Housing Concepts SRL (an agreement to purchase any of the houses constructed at Coverley that Maloney is not able to sell to the public); Bushy Park Circuit Inc (appropriating Bushy Park from its lawful owner and virtually placing it in the hands of Maloney’s company); and the list goes on.
(4) Are you aware that this is the Barbados of 2017 and not the old colonialist and elitist Barbados of 1917, and that in today’s Barbados the masses of black working-class Citizens have a right to be consulted on major decisions that have the potential to significantly impact on them and their country?
(5) Are you aware that Barbados’ Town Planning Department as well as the major international environmental institutions such as the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) require the carrying out of Environmental Impact Assessments (EIAs) as part of the procedure for processing applications of the magnitude of a 15 storey beach hotel, and that central to such EIAs is consultation with the people? Are you aware that Town Hall Meetings are routinely held in Barbados as part of the procedure for processing applications for major projects? Why is Mr Maloney’s application for a 15 storey beach hotel being treated so differently?
In light of the fact that Prime Minister Stuart has not consulted the people of the affected communities, the decision that he announced yesterday is WRONG! It is politically wrong; sociologically wrong; procedurally wrong; ethically wrong; and in all likelihood legally wrong as well!
On the 24th of August 2016 I wrote to Mr Stuart and urged him as follows:-
“….please do the right thing by subjecting the proposal to construct a 15 storey hotel in Bridgetown to a comprehensive Environmental Impact Assessment, with the people of Barbados (and Bridgetown) being suitably notified and permitted to participate and make inputs.”
I also ended the letter by informing our Prime Minister that “I look forward to hearing from you as a matter of urgency.”
In the five (5) months that have elapsed since I hand-delivered that letter to Mr. Stuart’s office I have NEVER received even an acknowledgement from Mr Stuart, much less a substantive response. Yet, Mr Stuart– the Prime Minister of Barbados– is pictured on the front page of the Nation Newspaper gleefully shaking Maloney’s hand and “skinning and grinning” in his face. What a national embarrassment !
Mr. Stuart would do well to remember the old Bajan adage that–“if yuh start wrong yuh bound to end wrong.”
Mr Stuart was required to start with a consultation with the people of the relevant Bridgetown communities, and he has neglected or refused to do so.
I therefore believe that Mr Stuart has started wrong!
Those sites are registered with the EPA and should not be occupied unless a decontamination is done
However in Barbados the order of the day is short cuts until some one becomes ill
I would also prefer to say that since the building has remained unoccupied there is sufficient reason to believe that govt has been advice not to use
I would like to know exactly which areas of the former hospital site is contaminated,as I have been through every part of that site from the early 70s through the 90s attending meetings of various govt departments and have never seen any danger signs.
What should be of interest is that when the DDT pesticide was finally banned here,the remaining quantity on the island was stored in a building at Crumpton street for decades oozing liquid from the building,no warning signs at all,officers of Ag. working in buildings next to it,it was finally disposed of around 84…….I wonder how many people were affected by it.
Hmmm……a class action suit against the Govt of Bim is a possibility.
I personally have seen liquid oozing into the gutters at a government industrial estate, from containers which carried a bold notice, to report any sighting of these particular containers to a given phone number of the EPA in the United States. Now, years later, in that same area where the liquid was flowing into a nearby well, trees, known for their longevity, began to dry up. The mainly American Manufacturing plants in that industrial estate have long gone. I doubt very much if the authorities in Barbados do carry out a post operation environmental assessment after these establishments, known to use dangerous chemicals, vacate Barbados, , as they did with the Mobil Refinery Site, and the gas station in Bay Street , adjacent the London Bourne Towers. And to compound the situation, we now see a wholesale and delivery food business expanding its operation on the same possibly contaminated area.
At the old hospital grounds over the years we have seen, the Ministry of Education, the Ambulance Service ,a Ministry of Health department, and other government departments working out of this site. We have seen Black Belly sheep and horsed, grazing on the compound. Did anyone in government,at any time alerted the personnel working there that this area could possibly be contaminated?
How many years ago was that building occupied. Suffice it to say that no occupation has occured since EPA laws were paased and to which barbados has signed and agreed
David
The below needs headlining as the citizens need to be made aware that they were exposed to danger at the old hospital site over decades.
Colonel Buggy February 4, 2017 at 11:38 AM #
At the old hospital grounds over the years we have seen, the Ministry of Education, the Ambulance Service ,a Ministry of Health department, and other government departments working out of this site. We have seen Black Belly sheep and horsed, grazing on the compound. Did anyone in government,at any time alerted the personnel working there that this area could possibly be contaminated?
ac February 4, 2017 at 12:06 PM #
How many years ago was that building occupied. Suffice it to say that no occupation has occured since EPA laws were paased and to which barbados has signed and agreed
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Wuhloss…….what sort of half bake answer is that……so after decades of being used by the populace wunna now decide that it is contaminated…………the public should realy bring a class action suit against the govt of Bim……no wonder so many unexplained illnesses floating around.
Bro have you ever heard the term “statue of limitations”
@ AC
Here is a statute of Limitations Clause for you.
The United Nations Development Programme was also a long term occupant on that compound in a building which you now gleefully claim was known by the Government of Barbados to be contaminated.
Here you are on barbados UnderGround with your usual “I have a secret, i know what you dont know” exposing this fact of contamination much like the BLP and their Louis Lynch/ Roebuck Secondary carcinogen producing site.
Given that wunna always begging UNDP for money, and given the fact that wunna now embroiled in a UNESCO Heritage designation issue, I wonder if David Commisiong would be advised to pursue some representation to said UN agency to say that the (successive) governments of Barbados did knowingly consign their agencies to this contaminated grave which after you announced that it was and is a grave, now glibly pass over the condemned site by saying that there is a “statute of limitations”
You is truly a chvunt of gigantic proportions.
Which detective picture dat you ever watch pun CBC Reporting lies that tell you dat dere is a statute of limitations pun murder??
A real waste Foop you is doah…
Piece Uh De Rock Yeah Right – INRI February 4, 2017 at 4:05 PM #
Yuh gottem wong dem talkin bout…….STATUE……….Bro have you ever heard the term “statue of limitations”……….mussee de pitchfork atta de garsun.
Can you imagine a govt operative spouting this nonsense,DC should investigate.
PDYR you like Trump cannot stomp on the law or change law because you belive you have a right.
Civil actions suits are brought when individuals can present evidence to verify . Most are brought within a shortened time span so that evidence presented can be actual and substantially verified by plaintiffs and witnesses.
ac
A civil action suit is soon to be brought against the DLP and Stuart Administration. The civil people of Barbados will take action to suit them by putting the DLP out off office enmasse.
Bacteria and viruses do not survive for very long without a host. Of course the old hospital treated people with bacterial and viral diseases, but very likely those bacteria and viruses are long, long, dead.
I may be wrong but I don’t recall that the old hospital carried out treatments (say for cancer) using radioactive materials.
The current hospital like all hospitals worldwide uses radioactive materials, and we all go these places and come to no harm.
If the Barbados government [both parties] believed that the old hospital site was contaminated would they have have permitted the Ministry of Education to operate from that site for decades, would they have prepared the site as an emergency treatment center when Barbados hosted World Cup cricket in 2007?
Methinks that ac telling lies, or what would be called in the U.S. these days “alternative facts”
Contaminants are not only regulated to radioactive materials
Wasn’t there a time when the old General hospital’s jetty, on that stretch of beach to the west of the old Eye Hospital, used to pipe all sorts of hospital garbage into the sea, and many Bajan boys ,especially ,used to swim and dive around that jetty. One would think that back then, that was more of a health hazard, than the old hospital’s grounds these days.
BTW Have we ever been worried about the possibility of dangerous contaminants at that site at Harrison’s St Lucy, once a United States Naval base , when we had exposed our young people of the Barbados Youth Service ,and later Staff and inmates of ex HM Prisons Glendairy there?