A new community resource centre at Bathsheba, St Joseph will provide about a dozen business opportunities and jobs, Community Empowerment Minister Dwight Sutherland said Monday.
The Bathsheba Community Centre, expected to cost $2.4 million to build, would provide employment opportunities for 10 to 15 residents through its kiosks and maintenance programme, he said.
It is to be built by Hackleton Construction over the next six to eight months, the minister said as he spoke at the groundbreaking ceremony Monday.
Sutherland said he hoped St Joseph residents would receive job opportunities in its construction.
The minister also announced that the Community Development Department has embarked on a project to upgrade resource centres across the island, including in areas such as Grazettes, St Michael, Black Bess, St Peter, and in St Lucy.
Plans are also being laid out for a multipurpose facility to target at least 500 young people in densely populated areas, including Wellington Street and its environs, he added.
Sutherland said: “We are about saving lives as a Government. We are about saving lives as a Ministry. We recognize the decay in our society in terms of violence and we believe the way to build back our society like in the 80s and in the early 90s is through communities and through programmes such as what we are launching here this morning. This is just part of a wider project that the Government will engage in in terms of providing opportunities for many young people, building global citizens.
“It is our wish as a Government that our community centres should be opened for 24 hours but I am hoping that we can start from 8 in the morning to midnight. After 4 o’clock which we call our after work hours, we want to empower persons in our community to own the community centres so that your job would be to make sure that you manage the facilities until daybreak again when we come back with our permanent staff.”
Declaring that his ministry is focused on providing opportunities for citizens, particularly the youth, Sutherland said the community centres are being used to train citizens in the areas of the blue economy and renewable energy. Beginning this month, the ministry, through a partnership with the Ministry of Energy and the Barbados National Oil Company Limited will train 2,000 young people at the centres through to next year.
“So we intend to train our people, utilize first world training skills, and utilize community centres to train these many young Barbadians so that the world becomes their playground,” Sutherland said.
MP for St Joseph Dale Marshall said the site was once the home of a community centre which fell into despair and remained unused for over ten years.
Marshall said the multipurpose facility would be aesthetically pleasing while meeting the needs of modern-day society and fulfil the residents’ dreams.
He declared: “It is a facility that stays true to the seaside community that Bathsheba has always been. I expect it will empower our community by providing economic opportunities for vendors [or] artists. It will empower our community because it will sit just in front of where we are planning a park. It will provide economic opportunities because we think that all of Bathsheba could be the next Oistins or the next Baxter’s Road or any of those centres where people come when they have a little time off and enjoy themselves.” (AH)
