A piece of land has been identified to facilitate the relocation of residents from the area commonly referred to as ‘Pole Yard’ at Arnos Vale.
Curtis King, Minister of Education and Parliamentary Representative for the constituency of West St George where the informal community is located said on October 26 during the ground-breaking ceremony for the Acute Hospital that it had taken the government some time to identify an appropriate piece of land for their relocation.
“But thankfully, we have done so now,” King said.
But while he did not disclose the location of the piece of land, he said that the government was in the advanced stages of preparation.
“In fact, we are looking now at having in place the infrastructure so that we can facilitate the relocation of our residents from that community,” the Parliamentary Representative said.
He thanked the residents for their patience and asked the to exercise a little more patience as they seek to get the task of relocation completed.
Back in 2022, government announced plans to relocate the residents from ‘Pole Yard’ to facilitate the construction of the Acute Referral Hospital.
Prime Minister Dr Ralph Gonsalves said then that the plan was to relocate the residents to another area and provide modern homes.
However, back in April this year, Gonsalves indicated that the residents were not required to be removed from the area during the construction of the health facility.
He said then that the Chief Surveyor was working on identifying lands and that while some of the land may be found within the same constituency, it was clear that enough land would not be found for all the residents.