For Immediate Release
Source: The St. Lucia Hotel and Tourism Association
Contact: Mr. McHale Andrew, SLHTA Tel: 1 -758 452 5978 or 453 1811 Email: mchale.andrew@slhta.org
Castries, Saint Lucia – Thursday, 17th December 2009 – The St. Lucia Hotel and Tourism Association (SLHTA), the Rodney Bay Community Association (RBCA) and the Rodney Bay Village Corporation (RBVC), with the generous financial support of several enlightened corporate citizens, have partnered with the Government of Saint Lucia through the Ministry of Home Affairs & National Security and the Royal Saint Lucia Police Force, to fund the redevelopment of the erstwhile Cat’s Whiskers Pub on “The Ramp” at Rodney Bay into a community police substation. An official “sod turning” ceremony to commence the reconstruction process and to acknowledge the munificent financial contribution of many other private sector partners is scheduled for Friday December 18th at 10.00 AM. The list of corporate donors who have thus far pledged contributions of cash, labour or building materials to the effort are as follows:
- Bank of St.Lucia
- Bay Gardens Bay Walk Mall
- Edge/Fire Grill Restaurant
- First Caribbean International Bank
- Florida Caribbean Cruise Association-
- J Q Charles Group of Companies
- LUCELEC
- Memories of Hong Kong
- Mr. Lindell Gustave (Guscomms Inc.)
- Mr. Michael Chastanet
- Rex St.Lucian Resort
- Rodney Bay Community Association
- Spinnakers Restaurant
- The Land Store
- The Village Inn & Spa
- Windjammer Landing Villa Resort
The pledged contributions to date represent about half of what is required to fully fund the facility but expectations are that other contributions would be forthcoming once the project gets underway.
The Rodney Bay area, which extends from the northernmost reaches of the IGY Rodney Bay Marina to Volney’s Gas Station in the South and includes the Rodney Heights, Rodney Bay Village, Rodney Park, Reduit Park, Reduit Orchard and Reduit Beach localities, is a very popular location for hotels, inns, banking outlets, condominiums, villas, restaurants, night clubs, shopping complexes, an Embassy and a host of other high profile commercial entities. The area is frequented on a daily basis by hundreds of residents and visitors for commercial and personal reasons and is moreover the entertainment and recreational capital of St.Lucia.
However, over the past two years, the incidence of crime, violence, home break-ins and visitor harassment has increased markedly and has expectedly raised growing concerns about the safety and security of persons and property in the area. This alarming jump in crime, which threatens to undermine the viability of the area as a residential, commercial and tourist attraction, appears to have coincided with a falloff in the number of police patrols in Rodney Bay and was not helped by the decommissioning, prior to the ICC Cricket World Cup in 2007, of the temporary police unit that had been erected on private property adjacent to the Bank of Nova Scotia in Rodney Bay.
After several meetings between the SLHTA, the Ministry of Home Affairs and National Security, the RSLPF, the RBCA, and various interests in the Rodney Bay area, the urgent need to construct a new substation was acknowledged. This proposed new substation will be a more permanent facility, given Government’s ownership of the land on which it will be built, and will serve as an operational centre for policing Rodney Bay and its environs.
The idea behind the initiative is to develop a best practices approach to community policing and law enforcement while also promoting an environment conducive to full community participation in safety and security programmes. The private sector partners hope that this initial step towards crime prevention would encourage a greater Government resolve to demonstrably repel the apparent bravado of the criminal element that seems bent on disrupting the peace of ordinary citizens, residents and visitors. All parties acknowledge that the economic viability of the country and the general welfare of its populace demand a zero tolerance to wanton criminal behaviour and a much more rigorous approach to the promotion of safety and security.
About the SLHTA: As the principal tourism private sector agency in St. Lucia, the SLHTA is responsible for facilitating tourism sector development and management in St. Lucia. The SLHTA is a private non-profit membership organization that functions as the “official organization and national spokesperson” for the hospitality Industry and its wide membership. The Association has a grouping of over two hundred members covering a wide segment of the economic spectrum of St. Lucia to include the tourism, manufacturing, agriculture and services sectors. The SLHTA is dedicated to representing, informing, educating and upholding the interests of its membership in the tourism industry, which has earned it the reputation as the “Voice of the Hospitality Industry”.
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