PM: A clean-up must be done

Messy business!

 

That’s how Prime Minister the Rt. Hon. Freundel Stuart described the price tag of the clean-up of the oil spill at Needham’s Point Peninsula.

 

Speaking in the Lower House on a resolution for the guar-antee for $12 million loan from First Citizens Bank for Needham’s Point Holdings Limited, Prime Minister Stuart referred to the contentious issue which dates back over a decade, when the Mobil Oil company ceased its refinery operations on the site.

 

Under a then Owen Arthur administration, a Canadian company was contracted to complete remedial work on the surface and below the site, which could lead to environmental implications. Subsequently there have been an injunction, payment disputes and a mediation ruling.

 

According to Prime Minister Stuart yesterday, “The matter was supposed to go to arbitration. There were issues raised about the arbitrator. The next step to be taken to get the whole issue of the clean-up of the old Mobil site. We have to move to get those processes completed. It has been very messy business. The financial arrangement in relation to the clean-up.

 

“Based on the facts made available, Government has been shafted in all of this, but we have to get the clean-up done. That area of Barbados is too important to the country as a whole and the tourism sector to just leave it lying around.

 

“But we have to be more prudent in the future when we are entering into these arrangements with international players who represent themselves as having certain capacities and quoting very attractive figures and only then once they have got in the inside track, they want to change the scope of the work and expose Government to having to pay horribly large sums of money. That is a story that now has to be told ASAP, so we can make the best possible use of the Needham’s Point Peninsula,” the Prime Minister said.

 

Addressing the resolution before the House and comments made by Independent Member of Parliament for St. Peter Owen Arthur, Prime Minister noted that the issue of Government guaranteeing loans is not likely to disappear anytime soon, since it is a deep-seated part of Barbadian culture, even in the banking sector.

 

“That belief in the entrepreneurship and culture to risk taking in the society is very limited. And the banks look at Government to be the last stop in the event that something goes wrong. This is going to take some time and because the Government wants to make sure that the economic activity continues to roll over... As the learned Attorney General said, we have to be concerned about providing jobs for our people and keeping economic activity alive and because in many respects investors are basically in a very sophisticated form of blackmail... basically saying if you can’t back us on this we can go elsewhere.”

 

He said as a result, Government sees its contingent liabilities spiral upward just to keep economic activity going. “And to protect the very people who are always criticising Government for inefficiency from themselves.

 

“You hear how inefficient the State is and when things are going badly, it is the ‘inefficient State’ which those who are failing turn. And if the State turns its back, then of course those who suffer are those who the State exist to protect. We have to continue to work at changing the culture and continue to make sure that we create a more vertebrae private sector culture in Barbados and other parts of the country,” he said. (JH)