MINISTER for Infrastructure, Ports, Energy and Labour Stephenson King, held meetings in Miami and Washington DC this week with a view to maintaining and upgrading the services of Saint Lucia’s air and sea ports.
During the Miami visit, Minister King met with officials of a major international shipping line and held discussions on the possibility of the cargo line making weekly calls to Port Vieux Fort. Dialogue on this venture appears to be fruitful with top officials of the shipping line being open to negotiations on making such calls.
The delegation led by the minister comprised Permanent Secretary, Allison Jean; General Manager of the Saint Lucia Air and Seaports Authority Keigan Cox and Director of the newly formed stevedoring company in the south Eldridge Stephens. Minister King also travelled to Washington DC to meet with officials of the International Finance Corporation (IFC), the private sector lending arm of the World Bank Group, which made presentations on the Hewanorra International Airport (HIA) Redevelopment Project, as well as the conceptual master plan for the development of the Castries seaport.
The IFC is the Transaction Advisor for the HIA Project, and was also retained to prepare a master plan for the Castries seaport redevelopment.
I hope Mr. king knows something about the financing options available for portions of these projects, like BOT, and the binding debt obligations related to port development. Please do not go the SLP ignorant route. Encourage conflicting views so as to surface hidden traps. For example, right now, China which funded Sri Lanka’s port development wants no part of any conversion of debt to equity swap. For our sakes, please do not just go for the empty SLP’s empty thrill of just signing documents willy-nilly, but with the wisdom of weighing up all the financial costs and assets risks involved.
Stephenson King:
The Chastanet Crime Family has publicly stated that you were the prime dispenser of the vigilante justice and a major participant in the Extra Judicial murder of the countless St. Lucian men, who were assassinated by the Pinochet Vernon Francois’ gang of Killer cops.
You have kept silent over the past years, but the time has come when you must explain the “TAKE THEM OUT ORDERS”. It is important you disclose who were your accomplices in the murder of our fellow St. Lucian. Michael Chastanet has began to give details of meetings you had with the Americans, which is quite perplexing, since it is the very same Americans who are now demanding that you criminals be brought to book.
I can play the video with Chastanet attempting to justify these murders, but we need to hear from you Mr. King; what part did you play in the murder of all these Lucian People???
1. Mr. King must have a clear policy of maximizing benefits to the native population rather than just building white elephants like Le Paradis.
2. That is very easy to do, which is to sidestep the development of the population and go for expensive infrastructure which lays idle while interest may have to paid to pay down loans on the infrastructure just built.
3. Perhaps support for home-porting is the best short- to medium-term investments that can be made at this time.
4. We have two ports and two airports that can accommodate home-porting for cruise travel tourism with Saint Lucia as a hub. Not thinking in terms of finding any a silver bullet for our problems, HIA’s importance can greatly be enhanced with a shortening of the travel time or route from HIA to the tourism enclave in the North. This can come either by way of a road, a tunnel, plain rail or tram. Think outside the box.