Sewage issues on South Coast were disastrous
The Barbados Labour Party (BLP) Administration views the sewage issues which previously plagued the South Coast as being the equivalent of a disaster.
Minister of Tourism and International Transport Kerrie Symmonds made this admission while addressing the St James Central District Emergency Organisation (DEO) Annual General Meeting on Sunday evening.
“It certainly was a crisis; it certainly had the economic impact of a disaster.”
He reminded the gathering at Queen’s College School Hall that the United Kingdom, Canada and the United States issued advisories warning their citizens of the potential health risks posed by the overflow of raw sewage along that tourist belt of the island.
According to the Minister “Those are our three largest source markets for tourism and we all know that tourism is the major export industry. As well as Germany which reflects the biggest part of Europe, so that is the fourth largest part of the market.”
“I recognise that the country is not in a financial position to do it all at once, but the country has had to rescue itself from the mess that was the South coast sewage disaster,” he pointed out, also acknowledging work being carried at the Bridgetown Sewage Plant.
“The country has also now had to turn its attention to Bridgetown because that situation, which we inherited as a new government, was borderline – about to become as bad as the South coast. And the fact of the matter is that while you have wrestled those two – South coast is largely no longer an issue and we are working on Bridgetown, we have to turn our attention eventually to the West coast.”
Symmonds, who is also the Member of Parliament for St James Central assured the DEO that Government intends to place emergency management and disaster risk reduction at the very centre of the country’s development agenda.
Moreover, he highlighted that all future Government Bonds issued will include a “Natural Disaster” clause.
This ‘Natural Disaster’ clause would allow for the capitalisation of interest and the deferral of scheduled amortisations falling due over a two-year period following the occurrence of a major natural disaster.
“It allows the state to put a two-year pause on the payment of interest and principal on those bonds. In the event of a disaster like what confronted Dominica, Bermuda or St Maarten – those kinds of tragedies would confront a government with the requirement to have to finance the rebuilding process by incurring debt… You have to go into the international market and borrow money and where it is still possible in the domestic economy you have to borrow more money,” he explained.
“…This gives government the fiscal space to finance rebuilding processes without having to go and incur new debt to do so. Which helps a country like us, that is in the already precarious and dangerous position of being third most indebted country on the earth, to be able to carry another generation of Barbadian forward, even if we have a tragedy heaven forbid next year, or year after.” (TL)