News, Politics, Top Story

PM Announces Plan To Reduce Unemployment

Image: Prime Minister Dr. Kenny Anthony. [PHOTO: Stan Bishop]
Prime Minister Dr. Kenny Anthony. [PHOTO: Stan Bishop]
TACKLING the high unemployment rate will remain paramount on the Saint Lucia Labour Party’s agenda should it be given another term in office, Prime Minister Dr. Kenny Anthony said last Thursday evening.

Speaking at an SLP public meeting held on the Castries Market steps where he addressed hundreds of supporters, Dr. Anthony said his administration has brought the unemployment rate down from 24.5% to 20%. His party, he added, intends to create jobs via various means, including more government-financed construction and the construction of an additional 2,000 hotel rooms.

“There is still work to do and so it will continue to be our number one priority,” Dr. Anthony said.

Dr. Anthony said that at the end of this year, government would have spent $100.139 million to create jobs, adding that the next five years will see more jobs being created via the largest programme of public works ever undertaken in the country, including the Gros Islet-Dennery Highway and feeder roads for agricultural communities.

The Prime Minister also outlined his party’s top 15 pledges aimed at elevating the socio-economic conditions of citizens. These include:

• Reducing unemployment to below 15%
• Linking Gros Islet and Dennery via the developing of a major highway along the island’s north-east coast
• Increasing the personal income tax allowance from $18,000 to $30,000
• Bringing more tax relief to pensioners
• Assisting parents in financing the children’s CXC fees from this year
• Financing a Tertiary Education Trust Fund at $3 million per year
• Building a new police headquarters
• Building a new dam on the Troumasse River
• Ensuring that Saint Lucia has a vibrant, robust and resilient economy
• Implementing universal health care (UHC)
• Transforming the Sir Arthur Lewis Community College (SALCC) to a university college
• Achieving complete energy dependence by 2035
• Rejuvenating Castries by converting the city into a duty-free cruise destination
• Transforming the agricultural sector, focusing on new value-added products such as nutraceuticals and organics
• Enacting legislation to protect the Queen’s Chain

The SLP’s 15-point plan for the economy came one week after United Workers’ Party (UWP) Political Leader, Allen Chastanet, outlined that party’s “5 To Stay Alive” plan that proposes a reduction and eventual removal of VAT, a 50% reduction for vehicle licence fees, doubling the school and transportation subsidies, an amnesty for fees owed to Victoria and St. Jude hospitals, and removal of personal property tax for three years.

One of the most contentious campaign issues concerns the UWP’s intention to initially reduce and ultimately remove VAT. The Prime Minister said the UWP’s plan to do so will create a huge shortfall in government’s revenues which currently realizes an annual intake of $346 million from VAT receipts.

Through the introduction of VAT, Dr. Anthony said Saint Lucia was able to remain out of the clutches of the International Monetary Fund (IMF). Nevertheless, he admitted that the VAT regime, which came into effect on October 1, 2012, needs strengthening.

“We believe that because we introduced VAT, (that it) works,” Dr. Anthony said. “Yes, there are weaknesses in VAT (and) we will have to correct things as we go along the way. But it has worked.”

During last Thursday’s public meeting, the Prime Minister announced June 6 as the date for general elections, with nominations day set for May 27.

Stan Bishop began his career in journalism in March 2008 writing freelance for The VOICE newspaper for six weeks before being hired as a part-time journalist there when one of the company’s journalists was overseas on assignment.

Although he was initially told that the job would last only two weeks, he was able to demonstrate such high quality work that the company offered him a permanent job before that fortnight was over. Read full bio...

9 Comments

  1. Only crack heads and drunks really listen to Ali Baba and his forty thieves. I pray to God that my people see through you all and kick you all ass out of office, pathetic group of cold heart monsters and all the stupid sheeps they follow blindly. If anyone knows failure it is Kenny Anthony.

    1. Only the lame-brained listen to other lame-brains for more empty promises of vanishing hope. Nonsensical lies, foolishness and hopelessness are here offered and repackaged. That is all I am getting from the sweaty foolish froth of the Devil incarnate.

      1. I never would have believed that Saint Lucia could produce such a set of vicious people as its representatives. This society is just good for safari vacations. Beware of the Zicka virus.

  2. /

    —6 6 6 LUCIFER 6 6 6 JESUS-GOD-THE-SON 6 6 6 SATAN 6 6 6 JOHN WAYNE 6 6 6 LAJAHBLES 6 6 6

    Many of the people reading this outstanding Newspaper, learned many things long before the unfortunate ones wasting their time reading the rag/torshon written by the Stripper, flasher, ninny weightlifter who believes God was born on the 25th of December to kill himself and pay Satan to set human beings free from Hell. Such demented people can never inform you of anything of significance, because these folk are abhorrently ignorant praying to dead Caucasians with the hope they will be honored by their white God by making them Knights of the Round Table – total COMEDIANS.

    You have read that the practice of asking /praying to dead people to favor you, or in the case of politicians praying/asking dead people to make them win elections is an abomination and disgusting practice of savagery. Many of you have rejected the practice of following the instructions given you by these Socially Maladjusted Misogynist who reside in the Homeless Shelter called Presbytery, spending what’s left of their miserable lives masturbating, watching porn, and drinking wine and smoking cigarettes.

    The concept that these perverts, known for masturbation, homosexuality, raping little children and pedophilia are possessors of power to forgive your sins if you told them/confessed your sins and saying three “Hail Mary” for committing fornication, sodomy, and murder is totally an act of deception by these SICKOS in an effort to drag you into Hell with them.

    Now these demented and ignorant savages led by the Romans Black Pete, John Wayne, Sarah Palin Flood, Allen Papishow Chastanet, Guy Joseph, and Mary Zeekak, will have you believing that the Election being held at 6 AM on the 6 DAY OF THE 6 MONTH, means that that LUCIFER, and all the DEAD PEOPLE, especially those who committed SUICIDE, will make the IMBECILE ALLEN CHASTANET GET INTO GOVERNMENT WITH THE SATANIC COMBINATION 6 6 6.

    What the hell is your problem? This is 2016 and you folk are still praying to DEAD AND DECOMPOSING CORPSES, to make you win elections? Sort se moun ki MOE-DEE.

    https://www.facebook.com/clayton.xware/videos/204184529922498/

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  3. Surah Abasa
    In the name of Allah Most Gracious Most Merciful.

    He frowned and turned away (1) 
    Because the blind man came unto him. (2) 
    What could inform thee but that he might grow (in grace) (3) 
    Or take heed and so the reminder might avail him? (4) 
    As for him who thinketh himself independent, (5) 
    Unto him thou payest regard. (6) 
    Yet it is not thy concern if he grow not (in grace). (7) 
    But as for him who cometh unto thee with earnest purpose (8) 
    And hath fear, (9) 
    From him thou art distracted. (10) 
    Nay, but verily it is an Admonishment, (11) 
    So let whosoever will pay heed to it, (12) 
    On honoured leaves (13)
     Exalted, purified, (14) 
    (Set down) by scribes (15) 
    Noble and righteous. (16) 
    Man is (self-)destroyed: how ungrateful is he! (17) 
    From what thing doth He create him? (18) 
    From a drop of seed. He createth him and proportioneth him, (19) 
    Then maketh the way easy for him, (20) 
    Then causeth him to die, and burieth him; (21) 
    Then, when He will, He bringeth him again to life. (22) 
    Nay, but (man) hath not done what He commanded him. (23) 
    Let man consider his food: (24) 
    How We pour water in showers (25) 
    Then split the earth in clefts (26) 
    And cause the grain to grow therein (27) 
    And grapes and green fodder (28) 
    And olive-trees and palm-trees (29) 
    And garden-closes of thick foliage (30) 
    And fruits and grasses: (31) 
    Provision for you and your cattle. (32) 
    But when the Shout cometh (33) 
    On the day when a man fleeth from his brother (34) 
    And his mother and his father (35) 
    And his wife and his children, (36) 
    Every man that day will have concern enough to make him heedless (of others). (37) 
    On that day faces will be bright as dawn, (38) 
    Laughing, rejoicing at good news; (39) 
    And other faces, on that day, with dust upon them, (40) 
    Veiled in darkness, (41) 
    Those are the disbelievers, the wicked. (42) 

  4. Surah Al-Jinn
    In the name of Allah Most Gracious Most Merciful.

    Say (O Muhammad): It is revealed unto me that a company of the Jinn gave ear, and they said: Lo! we have heard a marvellous Qur’an, (1) 
    Which guideth unto righteousness, so we believe in it and we ascribe unto our Lord no partner. (2) 
    And (we believe) that He – exalted be the glory of our Lord! – hath taken neither wife nor son, (3) 
    And that the foolish one among us used to speak concerning Allah an atrocious lie. (4) 
    And lo! we had supposed that humankind and jinn would not speak a lie concerning Allah – (5) 
    And indeed (O Muhammad) individuals of humankind used to invoke the protection of individuals of the jinn, so that they increased them in revolt (against Allah); (6) 
    And indeed they supposed, even as ye suppose, that Allah would not raise anyone (from the dead) – (7) 
    And (the Jinn who had listened to the Qur’an said): We had sought the heaven but had found it filled with strong warders and meteors. (8) 
    And we used to sit on places (high) therein to listen. But he who listeneth now findeth a flame in wait for him; (9) 
    And we know not whether harm is boded unto all who are in the earth, or whether their Lord intendeth guidance for them. (10) 
    And among us there are righteous folk and among us there are far from that. We are sects having different rules. (11) 
    And we know that we cannot escape from Allah in the earth, nor can we escape by flight. (12) 
    And when we heard the guidance, we believed therein, and whoso believeth in his Lord, he feareth neither loss nor oppression. (13) 
    And there are among us some who have surrendered (to Allah) and there are among us some who are unjust. And whoso hath surrendered to Allah, such have taken the right path purposefully. (14) 
    And as for those who are unjust, they are firewood for hell. (15) 
    If they (the idolaters) tread the right path, We shall give them to drink of water in abundance (16) 
    That We may test them thereby, and whoso turneth away from the remembrance of his Lord; He will thrust him into ever-growing torment. (17) 
    And the places of worship are only for Allah, so pray not unto anyone along with Allah. (18) 
    And when the slave of Allah stood up in prayer to Him, they crowded on him, almost stifling. (19)
     Say (unto them, O Muhammad): I pray unto Allah only, and ascribe unto Him no partner. (20) 
    Say: Lo! I control not hurt nor benefit for you. (21) Say: Lo! none can protect me from Allah, nor can I find any refuge beside Him (22) 
    (Mine is) but conveyance (of the Truth) from Allah, and His messages; and whoso disobeyeth Allah and His messenger, lo! his is fire of hell, wherein such dwell for ever. (23) 
    Till (the day) when they shall behold that which they are promised (they may doubt); but then they will know (for certain) who is weaker in allies and less in multitude. (24) 
    Say (O Muhammad, unto the disbelievers): I know not whether that which ye are promised is nigh, or if my Lord hath set a distant term for it. (25) 
    (He is) the Knower of the Unseen, and He revealeth unto none His secret, (26) 
    Save unto every messenger whom He hath chosen, and then He maketh a guard to go before him and a guard behind him (27) 
    That He may know that they have indeed conveyed the messages of their Lord. He surroundeth all their doings, and He keepeth count of all things. (28) 

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