Government doing its job
Government will continue to build houses, repair roads and make needed efforts to improve constituencies across the island, up until the night before the next General election, which is constitutionally due in 2018.
This is the promise coming from Minister of Drainage and Member of Parliament for Christ Church East, Dr. Denis Lowe who charged that if the conversation of detractors is to suggest that Government is only helping Barbadians in need due to the approaching election season, the record shows that his Administration’s work has been on-going for the past eight years.
“So if there are persons who want to term that as a way of trying to sweeten anybody, people have already decided what they want to do and we don’t canvass,” Lowe said.
The Member of Parliament (MP) was speaking to the media yesterday, at Parish Land, Christ Church, where Marlene Bourne received a three-bedroom house, through the Ministry of Social Care’s Poverty Alleviation Reduction Programme.
“There is no way that a constituency can have a record of having 300 persons helped with the repair or rebuilding of homes... we had a guy in our constituency who use to live in a pig pen and a house was built for him,” he stated.
Lowe highlighted that during the past eight years, close to 300 houses had been repaired, over 150 wells dug, and close to 400 street lights installed for his constituents.
The Member of Parliament also said that approximately 320 job opportunities have been created for constituents to ensure that “people are better off today than they were when we intervened”.
“So, this is not any election gimmick. If there are those who label it as that, it is very unfortunate that they are so ill-informed and perhaps mischievous in this time of election silliness. We were given a mandate when we took over our Ministries and the Cabinet continues to monitor our performance in the delivery of that mandate,” he said.
Meanwhile, Minister of Social Care, Constituency Empowerment and Community Development, Steven Blackett added his voice to the subject, stating that Government has been building and repairing houses over the past nine years, in an effort to alleviate households afflicted or affected by intergeneration poverty.
“So this programme is not an electioneering programme. It is an on-going programme by the Ministry of Social Care and when occasions like this are recommended by the Members of Parliament, from either side I want to add, we respond as the Ministry of Social Care to alleviate and reduce the poverty situation that these households find themselves in. So this is no electioneering, this is an on-going thing from the point of view of the Ministry of Social Care,” Blackett said. (AH)