Member of Parliament for St James Central Kerrie Symmonds wants the Chief Town Planner to start “talking the language of enforcement” in response to a development at Fitts Village, St James, which is blocking one of the last remaining windows to the sea.
In a strongly-worded statement, the politician declared that working-class Barbadians are still too often denied access to their “birthright” and warned that authorities cannot continue to turn a blind eye on matters of that nature.
“There has to be a minimum in this country and the access to the beach is accessible to the patrimony of this state,” Symmonds told a crowd gathered for the official re-opening of the Paynes Bay Fish Market.
“If the access to the beaches of this west coast is not treated as a first priority on the behalf of those people who live in this west coast, then they will have a noise with me and I don’t care which Government it is, it gon have a noise with me,” he warned.
Symmonds, who is Minister of Small Business, Energy and Entrepreneurship, therefore, welcomed a promised investigation into the matter from the Chief Town Planner, revealing that he also discussed the matter with Prime Minister Mia Mottley and the Minister of Maritime Affairs and the Blue Economy Kirk Humphrey.
He added that although planning permission for the development was granted in August, that approval came with conditions.
“One of the conditions is that you do not block access to the beach during construction.
Another is that you do not block access to the beach after construction,” Symmonds explained.
“It is understood that because it is so close to the beach, there may be times when, for the public safety, you wouldn’t want a brick or piece of wood to drop and hit a passer-by, so you may wish to restrict the times of day during which people would be going back and forward. But that developer was also supposed to notify town planning when he or she started to do their work.
“Now I see evidence of the beach being blocked during construction. I see no evidence of signage being put up to notify anybody on this coast, including me, about what is happening down there and I am therefore saying abundantly clear that the town planner should be able now to pay a visit and start to talk the language of enforcement,” he added.
Declaring that whilst the new developments are important for economic enfranchisement, investors should not be allowed to “do what the hell you feel to do in this land of our birth”.
“So if we have a developer who has decided that he is going to block access to the beach, then the developer must be brought to heel.
“We want a climate of tolerance, we want a climate where we can co-exist peacefully, but we cannot have such a climate if amongst us we have people who feel they can violate regulations, violate rules because their pocket stretches down by their ankle bone and ours stops somewhere by the hip. It can’t work,” said Symmonds.
Meanwhile, Minister of Maritime Affairs and the Blue Economy Kirk Humphrey, who was also at the event revealed that he has received numerous calls from concerned citizens about the developments.
He explained that while the Coastal Zone Management Unit would not trample on the jurisdiction of Town and Country Planning, it would do all in its power to honour its commitment to caring for the country’s coastal space.
“I guarantee the public that there will be nothing that is done that in the long term will jeopardise the reef, that will jeopardise the beach, that will jeopardise the people who live along there and who earn a livelihood along the beach,” said Humphrey.
“I promise you that there will be no construction along the beach that jeopardises the beach and the sea and so on,” he added. kareemsmith@barbadostoday.bb
