Mark Maloney
One thing the government cannot deny is that it is payback time. Mark Maloney who fronts for the Bjerkhamn Group has been ‘winning’ many major government contracts. […] Continue reading
Dr. Justin Robinson, Chairman, National Insurance Scheme
The Barbados Labour Party (BLP) continues to pressure the government on the lack of transparency surrounding the Cahill Waste to Energy project proposed to be located at Vacluse, St. Thomas. The political meeting held by the Barbados Labour Party (BLP) at Tyrol Cot on the weekend reinforced concerns raised by the Opposition Barbados Labour Party during the recent budget debate.
Photo credit: Barbados Today
BU has no issue with the private sector leading development especially if the result will translate in benefits for a wide cross section of Barbadians and not a few. The news that a new cement company to be called Rock Hard Cement is to be built at the Flour Mill, Spring Garden has generated valid questions by the public. Bear in mind the citizenry has been taken for granted under successive government when approving large private sector projects, the Greenland landfill comes to mind. Town Planning Department stipulation which requires Environmental Impact Assessment Studies and Town Hall meetings have long been accepted as a checklist item. Always the 9-day noise erupts from the population and abates until the next project.
One of the principals behind the project is the omnipresent Mark Maloney, a member of the Bjerkhamn/JADA consortium, who on the 24 January was quoted in the news as saying, “ …We are at the stage now where we are going to be building a plant at the Flour Mill. We have all the land identified and we are going through the regulatory processes and all that now but, in the interim, we are building a temporary plant [adjacent to the Flour Mill site], which is in construction right now, and we hope to be able to have the cement to market by the end of March, early April”. We have subsequently observed a pullback from Maloney’s position after questions were raised by the public of the level of Town Planning involvement. What Maloney’s statement confirms however is that the tail continues to wag the dog.
After reviewing media reports over the past couple of years I have updated my chronology of the Sandals/Almond saga, with particular attention to the Heywoods property.
To summarize:
Hal Austin
Two recent events should have shaken Barbadian society to the root. The first was the plea by former prime minister Owen Arthur for a truce on the dangerous standoff between the two dominant political parties on what to do about our badly managed economy, and for a cross-party National Commission on the Economic Development of Barbados. He did not put it in such words, but the sentiment is the same: if this generation of political leaders is going to pass on a sustainable economy and tolerant and stable society to future generations we have to call a halt on the political tribalism led by this terrible Ineptocracy (I love the word) and put our heads together in the interest of future generations.
The development, closely linked to the first, came out of the confusing and misleading hysteria about the future of Almond Resorts, was the call by Bjorn Bjerkhamn, the wealthy Norwegian, who now brands himself a ‘Barbadian’ on the basis of over 50 years of residence and, no doubt, a local passport. Mr Bjerkhamn is one of the wealthiest of the so-called New Barbadians, people who have moved from the four corners of the world and have sought to appropriate our lovely island and call it home. Some of them have nothing but contempt for local people, although this may not apply to Mr Bjerkhamn. I think I have some form on this: I have lived in Britain for over twice as long as I have lived in Barbados. Armed with my British passport, I am still reminded almost every day that I am an immigrant and any children or grandchildren those of us who have lived in Britain since the 1960s have, are called second-generation, or third-generation immigrants. It is a burden I am prepared to carry on my shoulders, since I challenge any man or woman to be more Barbadian than I.
Michael Lashley, Minister of Housing
A local home building firm charges the NHC/Government BDS$1.6 million for building 20 wall bungalow-type homes on so-called crown lands in a particular region in Christ Church.
The Government intends “to sell” these houses to prospective “buyers” on the local commercial housing market for BDS $ 1.8 million. But, being in no position to finance the building of these houses on its own, the government treacherously lay waits portions of the relevant incomes of the relevant persons, businesses and other entities in this country, and brutally seizes them, to disgracefully diabolically pay this home construction business this BDS $ 1.6 million.
However, before this happens, this firm goes and draws down on some of its savings and gets some institutional loans as well, in order to help get the building plans, the workers, the resources, the equipment, the necessary building and building related approvals, and other such things together, so that it would be able to construct the houses and turn them over to the government at the agreed time.
