Government has bought the Geddes Grant Building, Ursuline Convent and five acres of land at Chelston Park, St Michael, through three private treaties and has also put financial support behind the Graeme Hall Nature Sanctuary.
This was revealed by Minister of Housing, Lands and Maintenance Dwight Sutherland, who said the supplementary sum of $25 371 368 would see Government, as part of its educational reform, move to acquire the Ursuline Convent after the announcement of its closure in 2020.
Educational reform
“We wanted this property through private treaty for our educational reform programme and some of these funds would be paid towards this acquisition to close it out. In addition, lands at Chelston Park, at the corner of Chelston Avenue and Culloden Road, the property of Life of Barbados, now Sagicor Group, for the purpose of education we acquired those five acres through private treaty and again some of these monies will go towards the purchase of that property.”
He was speaking during debate on the Estimates 2024-2025 on Friday in the House of Assembly.
The other private treaty was the Geddes Grant building at White Park Road, St Michael, for the Barbados Police Service.
“In an effort to address some of the challenges we face, we have to find proper accommodation, fit for purpose accommodation, for the Police Service and the building was seen as one of those facilities that we can utilise and it is being utilised now by the Police Service.”
He said it was the purview of the Government to “help maintain” the Graeme Hall Nature Sanctuary which is 42 per cent Ramsar wetlands, “so some of these funds will go towards assisting that project in an effort to ensure that our mangrove, woodland and wetlands of this country are maintained”.
Also getting a supplementary was the Ministry of Education, Technology and Vocational Training in the sum of $546 000 to help with the reopening of the Alma Parris Secondary School.
It was also seeking $18.5 million to deal with a few sub-programmes such as the enhancement of security at some schools as well as renovation of a review building at the ministry’s headquarters.
“We are deep into change management reform and the change management unit was appropriately resourced during the course of this year, not just with respect to staffing, but certainly with respect to the programming that is intended to be delivered to assure that we can have effective transition from the current system into what we want it to be moving forward,” said Minister in the Ministry of Finance, Economic Affairs and Investment Ryan Straughn.
Education plants
“Also as part of the reform exercise, we’ve undertaken to ensure that we can have in the real sense a redesign of some of our facilities because as you would appreciate, we were building our education plants 40 to 60 years ago at a very different time with a different purpose. So the layout of facilities are pretty much modular and pretty, almost, Victorian.”
In terms of payment of utilities, the Government has seen an increase in relation to the consumption of electricity at primary schools. He said there was a need for emergency use equipment for the School Meals Department “in the event that something happens that we generally will have the capacity for our School Meals Department to continue to be able to provide hot meals for persons. So we’ve been upgrading our machinery equipment in that respect.
(NS)
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