Hon. Mark Brantley

Dear Editor,

The Four Seasons Resort has now been closed since 2008 and the closure has caused untold hardship to the people of Nevis in terms of their prospects for employment. There have been various false alarms of the imminent reopening of the Resort and that too has created some confusion and consternation among members of the public.

Information now in the public domain suggests that the Resort will in fact reopen towards the middle of December, 2010. That is welcomed news for our island which has never seen its economy this bad. My understanding is that the rehiring of workers will occur a few months before the scheduled reopening with a view to training those workers to once again take up the mantle of restoring the Four Seasons to its rightful place as the number one resort in the entire Caribbean.

This has been a most difficult journey for the people of Nevis. Along the way both the Government and the Opposition in Nevis have sought to encourage the urgent reopening of the Resort and have sought to reassure the people of Nevis that better times will indeed come to the island. For my part, I have kept very close contacts with all concerned and have monitored developments closely so as to inform myself of the position of this critical cog in the Nevis economy.

I welcome the news of the imminent reopening and ask all citizens and residents to pray that we are spared from any hurricanes or storms that could derail the very real progress being made on the ground at the Four Seasons as they march towards a reopening date. This is a time for togetherness and a time for prayer and fellowship as we all collectively work towards the speedy reopening of this major employer for the island of Nevis. I therefore urge our Church leaders to include in their sermons and their prayers our fervent hope and desire that the island will be spared the ravages of storms this year so that we can see a smooth transition of the Four Seasons Resort back to its place as a flagship hotel and employer in this our dear land. To the citizens and residents here, I ask that you ready yourselves for employment. Dust off your resumees and your working shoes. Rekindle the right mental attitude so that when the employment fairs come to your Parish, you will be well placed to secure a job at the new and improved Four Seasons Resort. It is time to put Nevis back to work and I call on all of us to get ready to seize the opportunities that lie ahead. We have many young persons leaving school who are also seeking work and I ask you too to be ready. There is finally some faint light at the end of this dark economic tunnel. We must seize every opportunity to get ourselves back to work.

To the Government, as a member of the Opposition, I pledge my fullest support to all efforts to reopen the Resort. I also admonish the Government not to seek to use the Four Seasons Resort as a political football. I admonish them not to seek to politicize the reopening but rather to allow us all to join hands in a real show of bipartisanship in the full understanding that the Four Seasons Resort is critical to the immediate economic fortunes of our beloved island. Already we have seen some posturing by the NRP Administration and even the nonsense claim by Premier Parry of Nevis that the CCM does not wish to see the Resort reopened. Already the plan is afoot for the NRP to try and take credit for the reopening of the Resort and even call an early election on that basis. I am calling on the Government to resist the base instinct to inject politics into what is and must be treated as an urgent national issue for all citizens and residents of Nevis. Let us join hands and demonstrate to the world that we are able and willing to take the politics out of these issues where we recognize that there is no political advantage to be gained or sought but only the welfare of the people of our island to be secured. I have publicly given my commitment in that regard and assure the general public that as a Party, we in the Concerned Citizens Movement are committed to the speedy reopening of the Four Seasons Resort and to the employment of our people once again so that we can start to rebuild Nevis from the economic ruin that has befallen her.

Let us therefore pray together and labour together to ensure that the Four Seasons Resort reopens as anticipated and that some sense of economic revival can be ushered into being in this the beloved land of ours, this majestic island called Nevis, Queen of the Caribbees.

Regards

Hon. Mark Brantley