Leader of the Opposition, Dr Godwin Friday said that the billboard placed at Gibson Corner has nothing to do with tourism.
He was at the time speaking on radio this morning about the billboard put up by the New Democratic Party (NDP) last Thursday, May 16 which states: ‘There were 52 homicides in SVG in 2023. Crime is out of control. The NDP has a plan to make SVG safe again’.
And since then, it has been the topic for discussion on social media with some of the opinion that based on the location and the message, it was damaging to the image of the country.
But Friday remained adamant that the message was not attacking tourism.
“I am concerned about what is happening to the people in this country; we live it everyday, and tourists are not as naive and ill-informed as some people seem to think,” the Opposition Leader said.
According to Friday, the NDP has been talking about crime in the country for several years now, especially since the situation had gotten to a stage now where there were record homicides committed two years in a row in 2022 and 2023.
“Year after year, you have this situation with this chronically high incident of homicides, murders in the country.”
“And we have been talking about this. But very few members of the government seem to take it seriously as a problem that we need to address,” the Opposition Leader explained.
He added that he cared about the country and its people and about the ‘bread and butter’ of the people.
“But if you have a situation where you have a problem and you pretend that it is not there, it does not mean that people are not seeing it,” Friday said.
He contended that the billboard was stating information that the people already knew.
Crime, Friday said, has been on social media which has a much wider reach than a billboard here.
And the concern is that the Opposition has not been getting any serious response from the government on the issue and now, the billboard has been able to generate discussion among the public.
“When you have uncomfortable problems, difficult problems, you have to confront them head on.”
He said that people were concerned about the impact of the billboard on Sandals, but the placement of the billboard had nothing to do with the resort.
“It is about a place where our people can see it,” Friday contended.
In fact, there were plans to erect other billboards by the NDP highlighting other issues affecting the country.
He further denied that the billboard was an indication that the NDP was trying to say that the situation as it relates to crime was unable to improve but an indication of bad governance and the government not addressing the problem.
“And if you don’t want to talk about it, we going to make sure that you talk about it because we need to get solutions,” Friday said.
The billboard went up because the government has been very flippant, Friday said.
According to the Leader of the Opposition, a lot of the people who were opposed to the billboard are those who are the spokespeople for the government who wanted to be judged by their intentions rather than the effect of the policies of the government.
“We put up a billboard that states a fact, we did not make up anything. The problem is this, how do we address it?” he said.
