Crane staff to clean smoked-out neighbouring houses

Residents of Olive Drive, Crane, St Philip, were Wednesday night breathing a sigh of relief following an apparent change of heart by their next-door neighbour, Crane Resorts after last Friday’s smouldering fire there poured billows of the thick smoke through the neighbourhood.

.Some residents had been promised accommodation at the St Philip hotel and given the assurance their houses and laundry would be cleaned.

But while a handful of residents accepted the offer and spent the weekend at the famed hotel, some expressed disappointment that management had reneged on the offer to clean their homes.

When a team from Barbados TODAY visited the area on Monday, Sharon Marshall voiced her frustration.

The resident explained that after being told a cleaning company would be coming to her house on Monday, she was later informed the hotel would no longer be paying for the service.

Marshall said: “I asked for the day off from work [Monday] because they told me cleaners would be coming to clean my house, but then at 12:22 p.m. on Monday they called back and said they can’t clean the house today but [Tuesday].

“A lady from the Crane then called me back and told me that their insurance doesn’t cover that and we would have to get our insurance to foot the bill for cleaning the house.

“I’m really annoyed because at the end of the day they said these were the things they were going to do as a good corporate citizen but now it is something else different.”

Another resident, annoyed the Crane withdrew its offer, said her curtains and laundry still smell of smoke.

But in an interview, Paul Doyle, CEO of Crane Resorts told Barbados TODAY a solution to the problem had been found.

He said the hotel’s cleaners had agreed to clean the affected houses.

Doyle said: “We had offered them to stay at the Crane and we also offered that we would send a team of our housekeepers to clean their houses…but the housekeepers that were approached were really reluctant to go in because of the COVID situation and the lockdown and everything.

“So I reached out to the housekeeping manager and asked them to speak with the team that goes into rooms that had COVID positive cases because we are a quarantine hotel – so we have a trained team with the right equipment and the PPE – and we reached out to them to go to the homes and they are cleaning the homes today so it was just a little bit of a glitch with getting the right people to go in.” (randybennett@barbadostoday.bb)