New roads in the works for St Joseph

The people of St Joseph can expect spanking new roads in a new dispensation of a Barbados Labour Party (BLP) Government.

Incumbent member of parliament for the area, Dale Marshall told Barbados TODAY after signing his nomination papers to contest the January 19 general election that work will soon begin to fix a large section of the road network in the parish.

“One of the perennial challenges of the constituency is roads, and the road infrastructure was neglected through the ten years of the last administration and the challenge that this posed as a result of the slippage of the area of my constituency,” he said.

“This has caused a number of roads to fall into a state of disrepair. We have been addressing that but, unfortunately, we just have not been able to – given the challenges with government resources as a result of COVID – at the pace that we would want.”

The St Joseph MP of 19 years said the Government is borrowing $230 million from the Bank of China to finance the road works on the eastern corridor.

He said: “The only purpose of which will be to rehabilitate and stabilize the Scotland District road. That spells a wonderful episode for St Joseph because much of my constituency is in the Scotland district and a lot of roads are badly affected.”

Marshall is seeking to represent his constituents in the House of Assembly for a fifth term.

“I was very happy to have a number of my supporters here. Some of them have been with me from the day I started this process back in 2003 and it’s nice to know that they are still around and supporting me and supporting the Barbados Labour Party. Overall, I think things went very well this morning,” he said.

The long-time MP added that the response so far has been encouraging.

“We have been on the road doing quite a bit of canvassing and the response has been very good,” he told Barbados TODAY, adding that he was not worried about the competition.

“Any person who enters a race must always be cognizant of the fact that his opponents are challengers and I don’t relegate anybody who is running against me into the area of not being a serious challenger. Anybody who I run against is going to be a serious contender. I expect to prevail again on this occasion.” (KB)