One year after Hurricane Beryl inflicted extensive damage to the Southern Grenadines, normalcy has yet to be restored to the islands. As the official hurricane season commences on June 1st, Member of Parliament for the Southern Grenadines, Honourable Terrance Ollivierre, has voiced serious concerns about the current situation, criticizing the Unity Labour Party (ULP) government for what he describes as inadequate planning for the season and insufficient measures to deal with the persons who have been affected by Hurricane Beryl.
Mr. Ollivierre raised his concerns on the New Times program. He said:
“There are residents from the Southern Grenadines who are on the mainland close to a year, and it’s close to the hurricane season once again. First and foremost, these people are longing to go home, but some of them don’t have any house to go to. Some of them do not have any lands on which to rebuild because they were renting. You know the situation when you are renting, and they are looking for accommodations for themselves and their families.
I put out a video last week showing how Union Island is still not fixed. Some people told me that comments were made that persons’ houses were already fixed. But I wish to assure the people of St. Vincent and the Grenadines, if you go to Union Island, you would see those houses on Union Island that have not been fixed. There are some houses that were demolished by Beryl which have to be completely rebuilt.
That process for some people has started. Others have not. While talking to some people in the temporary accommodations on the mainland, they told me that some of them attended the consultation at the cruise ship berth and some went to Union Island to the consultation. And they were told that they need to get lands or ask members of their families who have lands, if they can provide them or help them out in order to put whatever they want to give them, whether it’s the prefab houses on these lands.
I took pains to point out that about two weeks or so after Beryl, we had the Supplementary Estimates that made provision for $2.5 million to purchase lands for people who were displaced by Hurricane Beryl. I know certain provisions were made for people in other parts of St. Vincent and the Grenadines when it had flooding and people’s houses were destroyed—the government bought lands, built houses, and these houses were distributed to people. Why was the same consideration not made for people of the Southern Grenadines who were displaced by Hurricane Beryl?
Several months ago, the government tried to occupy lands from private people in Union Island in order to give to develop. Why is it that they can’t acquire land in Union Island to build houses for people who are suffering and who are longing to go home?
Here you have $136 million in an Estimate which was put forward to help people who suffered from the effects of Hurricane Beryl. And up to today, some people were asking me, where is the money? Where has it gone? Where was it spent? Do we have a breakdown of where the money went or how it was spent? Why are there so many people still suffering on this island?
Apart from that, I want to also add, when you look at the business places in Union Island, the business people are suffering to get operational again. Why is it that help has not gone to these people in order to get their businesses up and running again so that they can provide economic activities on the island that is needed to provide the employment and other things that are needed for the island to start to rebound? Because we know with economic activities and people returning to their homes, people are looking to earn a livelihood and we will get back to where we were and even better as quickly as possible.
I also want to point out that we are just a couple days away from the beginning of the hurricane season. Most of the shelters on Union Island, Mayreau are no more. They have been destroyed.
