Talk show hosts slam Premier Smith for hitting back @ Hon Turnbull
This time it was from talk show host Mr Claude O. Skelton-Cline and his guests, all talk show hosts, Mr Donald E. de Castro, Mr Richard C. de Castro and Mr Edmund G. Maduro, on the show Honestly Speaking, aired Tuesday December 12, 2017 on ZBVI 780 AM.
When Premier Smith took the time “to clear up the misrepresentation of events in support of our clean-up and recovery efforts” in a Government Information Services (GIS) press release, issued December 11, 2017, it was an act that Mr Skelton-Cline called an “almost attempt to shoot your own soldier.”
The four men were at the time discussing the present situation in the Second District, primarily Cane Garden Bay. It was on December 6, 2017 that the Second District Representative, Hon Turnbull, publicly stated that government was not doing enough to help the restoration process in his district. “No one has come to Cane Garden Bay to help with clean-up from a governmental standpoint,” Hon Turnbull had said.
‘He has a right’
The men concurred that “he [Hon Turnbull] has a right to assert his stewardship in defending and seeing about the well-being" of his constituents who sent him there to represent them.
Mr Skelton-Cline continued by saying, “he has a right on our behalf to speak loudly and clearly that this is wrong, because while you are there funding Brandywine [Bay] and funding what’s happening at Long Bay with the same tourism product, when Cane Garden Bay in particular and the whole Second District from Jost van Dyke to Brewers Bay is the hub for the cruise and overnight [tourists], and the most destroyed, and you have not extended any real meaningful help.”
“If you look at Cane Garden Bay, the whole businesses cannot function, and with the businesses non-functional they are not paying taxes,” said Mr de Castro (Richard).
The Second District Depresentative has said in the past, “I will not allow for the businesses in Cane Garden Bay to set up tents to serve any of our tourists. We have a standard that we have to uphold in this territory of the Virgin Islands.” Most of the main businesses in Cane Garden Bay remain closed.
Also closed is the Cane Garden Bay beach, the main tourist attraction in the district. In a GIS press release dated December 7, one day after Mr Turnbull ridiculed the government for accepting cruise ships and not assisting CBG businesses to be ready for the tourist season, it is stated that the “beach is closed for recreational use until further notice due to poor water quality.”
The release continued to explain that the swimming water was contaminated with a high bacterial content that could have resulted from the run off of heavy rainfall recently and the non-functioning sewage treatment plant in the area.
Mr Skelton Cline was quick to note that none of the communities in district two have received electricity.
2nd District still without power
“The pumps that are supposed to pump the effluent are non-functional because they don’t have electricity and all that stuff is going to the beach,” Mr de Castro (Richard) added.
The GIS release also stated that “the water quality at Smuggler’s Cove and Long Bay, Beef Island beaches are of excellent quality.”
24 Responses to “Talk show hosts slam Premier Smith for hitting back @ Hon Turnbull”
Reading, thinking and reasoning are absolutely fundamental.
Now, here comes a pack of complainers who have not and do not contribute anything constructive to the betterment of the country attempting to justify an inappropriate act.
Please note that in my location we have not yet rec'd electricity or phone service. There is no vendetta against any particular community. We're all in this together. Please quit with the useless diatribe.
A total waste of effort.
. How come it was so convenient for the press release to come out one day after Hon. Turnbull spoke up. We the residents of the second district put him there to speak on our behalf and that he did. So he is being chastised for it. All I can do is shake my head. Keep Working Mitch we got you.