By Lloyd Noel
The controllers have now completed eighteen months in the driving seats of their five years total control of the reins of power in the tri-island state.
And after all the grand promises of major investments and jobs provision – for the thousands of unemployed young and elder folks who voted them into office – the waiting game is continuing.
I saw a report on Caribbean News Now, which gave some details about a statement made by the Prime Minister at a conference in Samoa in the Pacific, about an MOU signed by Grenada and the USA, for the support of the USA in the transformation of the energy sector in Grenada. The report stated that the US will focus on improving the energy enabling environment, and assisting with bringing additional partners and scaled-up investments to Grenada.
The statement looked very encouraging and positive, so we can only hope that the promises will be fulfilled in the not too distant future.
We now have the Casino and Gambling Bill passed through Parliament, to provide licences for hotels with three hundred rooms and over, to come and do business in the state and provide casino gambling.
We can only wait to see, how that form of tourists attraction will enhance our tourism product in the years ahead. Because as the situation stand for some time now, the tourists who mostly come to our shores are those on the tourist ships which visit on a daily basis.
So that to attract an investor to come and build a three hundred rooms hotel – to be able to provide casino gambling for visitors – that possibility looks like there is much more in the whole scheme.
The Constitution Reformation planned for March next year, includes our tri-island state becoming a republic and breaking our Privy Council ties with England.
If the two-thirds majority votes are obtained – to bring about the proposed changes that we have heard of so far – it would also put the government in the position where the sky is the limit, when it comes down to what those in control plan to do thereafter.
And that is most definitely why our people have to be thinking very deeply, about the planned changes to our Independence Constitution.
The twelve or so proposals put forward by the government appointed Committee, except for two or three of them the others are merely scratching the surface.
And that is why it is so difficult to understand the silence from the political parties in our midst.
Except for Senator Nazim Burke of the NDC, all the others are very quiet. Does that mean they agree or see nothing wrong with the happenings, so they are prepared to let things take their course, come what may next March?
That kind of behaviour is just not good enough, and those in leadership positions clearly have a duty and serious responsibility to let their voices be heard, or else their silence will be interpreted as in agreement.
There is no denying the case in which a whole lot of people are in need of some form of employment, to take care of themselves and their families. And it is from that standpoint that the controllers would feel justified in getting into any kind of business operations by investors that will provide employment.
But those in control have the responsibility and a solemn duty to ensure that the standards and characteristics and wellbeing of the people are maintained at all times. And to do this they must also be very careful in choosing investors and the types of business operations agreed upon with those chosen.
We already have Casino Gambling on statute lists, and the bar on our nationals entering those places is not the answer. It is what the visitors will get involved in outside the hotel that will be the problem.
So while we waiting to see where we going and how soon, the situation islandwide is not improving and a whole lot of our people are in great need and becoming impatient.
