Published 17 May 2019
Buckie Got It, St. Kitts and Nevis News Source
Land ownership: Locals were disadvantaged by previous government says PM Harris
BASSETERRE, ST. KITTS, May 17, 2019 (PLP PR Media Inc.) — That the new Denzil Douglas-fronted actors in the proposed cannabis industry had been promised 300 acres of land for growing the crop, Prime Minister Dr the Hon Timothy Harris is pointing out that it was a pattern by former Prime Minister to disinherit people from their own land and that he has to be stopped.
Prime Minister Harris, who was the special guest on Straight Talk radio show on WINN FM on Thursday evening May 16, made the observation in response to a question posed to him by the host, his Cabinet colleague the Hon Ian Patches Liburd. After noting that most of the available land would have been given away under the former Prime Minister, the host asked: “Where is all this land that is to be planted for this new potential industry?”
“Importantly we have to go back to the point that you made, because it is not the first occasion under which Denzil Douglas has sought to alienate ordinary people from their land,” said Prime Minister Harris. “We have to recall the effort to introduce the land for debt swap programme which resulted in the first instance in about 1,200 acres of land being taken away and taken out of the reach of ordinary people of St. Kitts and Nevis.”
As a consequence, observed Dr Harris, little land was available in Cayon, in Lodge Project, Ottley’s, Sandy Point and other areas to facilitate the ordinary and organised development of housing projects in those areas. He however noted that the only general area where lands were not part of the land for debt swap interestingly was in Number Six. In total about 1,700 acres of land were made out of the reach of the ordinary people of St. Kitts and Nevis.
“We should see the pattern too that when we had an opportunity on the peninsula for a local black man, in Dr Wycliffe Baird, to be able to develop and participate in the economic life, Denzil Douglas appropriated about 854 acres of land and displaced Dr Baird from participation in that particular land matter,” Prime Minister Harris told the listening public.
The Honourable Prime Minister also reminded the listening public of prime lands at one of the most expensive areas in the country, at the airport, that were sold to the then Antigua-based businessman, Mr Allen Stanford, at 25 cents per square foot. At the same time ordinary people were being charged $2.95, $4.00, and $6.95 per square foot of undeveloped residential land.
The listening public was also informed that former Prime Minister Douglas had invited a former Prime Minister of Dominica, Edison James, to lease to him 110 acres of land outside St. Paul’s, overlooking the ordinary people in his community who he could not even give an acre for farming. It was only when that arrangement with Edison James fell apart that the project was renamed the Capesterre Project.
“I want people to be aware of the pattern,” advised Prime Minister Harris. “So this effort now to secure some 300 acres of land follows with that same pattern of disinheriting our people from their own land, and Denzil Douglas has be stopped. The only way he can be successful in getting 300 acres of land for those unsavoury characters would be if the people of St. Kitts and Nevis were not to take stock and were to fall asleep and to allow him to return to government again.”
Prime Minister Harris however observed: “That will not happen, because the people are alive to the efforts of Denzil Douglas to satisfy the interests of his foreign associates to the disadvantage of ordinary people.”
ENDS
Pix caption:
Prime Minister Dr the Hon Timothy Harris on the Straight Talk show on WINN FM Radio on Thursday May 16.
