The following email was submitted by a concerned citizen who resides at Vaucluse, St. Thomas and we have reproduced without any changes to the content. It seems that this is an issue which the sitting MP Cynthia Forde for the area has been unable to resolve. Please note that this communication was also sent to Barbados Free Press and the Nation newspaper.

David

There are just a few things that motivate me to write publicly. When something is wrong, legally and morally, and it affects your community, should one be quiet, or should one place it before the society? When one has a small successful business in a supposedly also successful, happy Caribbean Island is it right to intervene in a community issue? What gives one the right to fight on behalf of community? People are doing a development at Vaucluse without Town Planning approval. For several years now I have led a campaign (quietly in our area) against the establishment of a race track in an area of Vaucluse Plantation, adjacent to Dukes, and close to the villages of Shop Hill, Christie Village, Dukes, Whitehall and Vaucluse. In the beginning it was due to the noise and the anti-social aspects of such a thing being established. A child was killed on the roadways by a truck, unlinked to the track. My family and I were nearly killed by a drunk driver in a line of traffic coming away from an event at the dirt track a couple of years ago. Now, with the mode of its development I observe a dangerous trend in Barbados, one that we should be extremely wary of.

At Christmas 2005 there was a Town Hall Meeting at Lester Vaughan School, where objections were voiced against retention of the dirt track, and further objections were voiced against a drag strip, and expansion, and paving, as proposed by the developer. Subsequently written objections were sent to Town Planning and the Minister. One of those who spoke out against this track being established was the Honourable Cynthia Forde, M.P. for St. Thomas. Ms. Forde has been a friend of those who are against the track, and has spoken out against it whenever we, the residents of the community, have asked. We mounted a petition, an unfinished petition, in our community and received 300+ signatures, covering half of Shop Hill and Dukes, which were delivered to the Prime Minister and to Town Planning: against establishment of this track, with grounds. Many of us wrote objections, which were never acknowledged, or responded to.

Town Planning has issued both ‘Stop Orders’ and ‘Enforcement Orders’ on this development, but to no effect.

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