Premier Joseph Parry recently sat down with The Observer’s Nevis Editor James M. Abraham to discuss his new administration. Here are his comments from that interview:Premier Parry, you referred several times in your acceptance speech to the first 300 days of your administration. What do you hope to accomplish during that period?
We said that our campaign was people-focused, particularly young-people focused. Right away we are seeking to have community centers operating…the idea is to have real programs to train people in the community… we want to have a library center and we want to have computers there, we want to have community services. We want to have programs for adults and young people such as drama, the arts, culture, exercise programs, a variety of programs that would interest the community. We intend to establish the parish councils in the five parishes… the community centers will fall under the parish councils because the activities of the community centers will be things for the community. In addition to those activities they will be responsible for the maintenance of roads, drains, and the beautification of the villages…so you localize certain activities such as garbage collection.
So, sir, you hope to decentralize government?
To a point, in certain areas that have been neglected because we could not give them the intensive focus as a central government.
Another aspect is the training of people and job creation in information technology to…have people working in those areas. We have already started serious discussions about that.
Then there’s the road program, the island main road. We won’t complete it in 300 days but we’re going to start it.
I’d hate to travel a road that’s been planned and completed in just 300 days!
I promise the work will start. We will also take a serious look at the Pinney’s Beach Hotel the Rest Haven Inn (as to) how we can untangle the circumstances surrounding them that has prohibited their rehabilitation. We’re also having serious discussions about Lovers’ Beach marina.
What about education, Mr. Premier?
We indicated our intention of making the sixth form…separate from secondary school…we want those kids to be placed in a more college environment…it’s basically giving them responsibilities early. They have to discipline themselves and do the necessary studies. We have to provide the research facilities for them to be able to do so. There are quite a number of other things, but what I’ve outlined; these are all young people-based programs that we are talking about.
What other initiatives can we expect, Mr. Premier?
We’re also trying to streamline the tax structure and trying to deal with the cost of living immediately. We have a lot of little taxes here that have been an administrative nightmare. Sometimes you have a tax that costs more to collect than what you collect. We have to look at the wastage too…there are some taxes that are not being collected. And then we will look at other possibilities to try to do something about the cost of living.
You notice we’ve touched on cost of living, we’ve touched on education, training, we’ve touched on jobs, we’ve touched on roads, the only thing we haven’t touched on is crime. Those are the six priorities that we identified and some of the things we will be doing is addressing crime indirectly (through these programmes).
The other aspect of crime is working with the police. We have to work on that, I don’t want to restrict that to only 300 days. It’s very important not to be tied down to 300 days.
Mr. Premier, what about police staffing issues? I understand the police are undermanned.
All that we will be working on…building, staffing, resources, but I’m not restricting that to 300 days.
Give me an example of a tax or a cost-of-living issue you would consider addressing, sir.
For example if you are going to St. Kitts you have to pay a dollar tax. That’s one. And in terms of the cost of living, when Dominica boats come here they have to go over to Long Point rather than Charlestown… if they can dock here they’re going to bring their food costs down…that’s something we’re going to seriously look at adjusting very early..
In understand that at one point Nevis exported food. Can Nevis feed itself, Mr. Premier?
You can’t be self-sufficient on Nevis. You don’t have the population; you don’t have the arable land to do that. (Long ago) people used to use a fork and a hoe manually…they don’t do that anymore. You can limit yourself to certain agricultural activities but there are certain things you’re going to have to purchase from St. Kitts or Dominic or even Miami.
Agriculture is a priority for us but we have to understand the limitations and the boundaries…(For example) people are going to have to pay a little more attention to taking care of animals…this is something that has developed over the past 15 years or so…you can call them landless farmers…they have animals but no land. Maybe 30 or 40 years ago when the country was under sugar, when sugar was the major crop, and so was cotton, people had to take care of their animals, otherwise serious measures would have been taken. But with the movement to tourism and the almost abandonment of agriculture, lands have lain idle for many, many years and people have allowed their animals to stray without any kind of chains or anything. We need to bring that under some form of control…It’s something that we have to work on…we have to use moral suasion at first, to make people more responsible.
During your comments on VON Radio during the election aftermath, you referred several times to the airport as the “Newcastle Airport.” Does your administration plan to make that change official, sir?
I have not addressed that matter
There are rumors that certain members of the former administration may face indictments, Mr. Premier.
We have not addressed that matter either. Our priority right now is to get the economy going, to have some injection into the economy so that we can have revenue flowing and jobs created.
