 Welcome everyone, the Government Information Service and the National Television Network presents In Focus, a live 90-minute discussion program looking at the plans and policies of the government of St. Lucia. This is certainly going to be a segment where we'll be able to interact with the public and you can do so by calling in on the number that you will be presenting on our screen and you can also join us live on Facebook and we'll be certainly reading those questions that you have. My co-hosts, this initial program, Lisa Joseph, Lisa, certainly we've got to stay in focus. Absolutely, thank you so much Ryan, good morning to St. Lucia, let's not forget St. Lucia. In the diaspora, most importantly we want to be hearing from you, that's where Facebook comes in when we have our question and answer segment for the public. But In Focus, 90 minutes and as Ryan indicated, gives you that opportunity for you to be able to hear in detail the government's plans and policies and have you interface with government representatives, officials, as well as ministers of government. The program gives you also sort of recap of the big stories happening in government through things, some of the stories get lost and over the last week, one of the big stories coming out of the government of St. Lucia is the opening of the Souffre town square and we know that Souffre is considered to be the sort of bread basket of tourism for the island and there is a transformation happening down in Souffre, so we've had the square with Old Trafford complex as well falls into that, we had before the square added a complex transformation, we had seen the Hummingbird Beach Park opening up and completely renovated. So we now go to a report by Anistia Antoine that encapsulates what the opening ceremony was like for the Souffre town square. Development on the west coast is moving at an increasingly high rate with a newly built Souffre Beach Park, farmers market, bus terminal and now officially opened Souffre square. The redesigning of the Souffre square included installation of urban umbrellas, a water fountain and the freedom monument. Parliamentary representative for Souffre, Honourable Herod Stanislas, expressed her satisfaction with the outcome of the project. I am extremely proud and happy that we have been able to deliver to you a state of the art facility in the heart of Souffre City and I believe that you the people of Souffre ought to feel equally proud to have such a facility right here in downtown Souffre. The new design should enhance Souffre's sense of place, be memorable and appeal strongly to the emotions of both visitors and locals. The Prime Minister of St. Lucia, Honourable Allen Shasne, explained that the economic development in Souffre will directly impact the economic development of the surrounding communities. The standard of square that we would have delivered to the people of Souffre would not have been in keeping with the rich history. And you heard the beautiful singers come up here and tell us the story, the rich history of what Souffre is about and I'm saying to you that people in the world want to know that story and we want it that when they come through the town that we can now start seeing attractions develop around town that be able to take advantage of that opportunity. The construction work on the redesign of the Souffre Square, which began in 2017, was funded by the Government of the Republic of China Taiwan under the Constituency Development Programme. Councillor Bill Wang is the charge defer of the Embassy of the Republic of China Taiwan. I have to say but for the relentless efforts and dedication of the Honourable Prime Minister Shashnik and Minister Stanislaus, I wouldn't have been here today and I believe there are more opportunities. We come back here for more projects that Senucia and Taiwan work together. The opening ceremony of the Souffre Square took place on Wednesday, July 31, 2019. From the Government Information Service, I am Anisha Antoine reporting. Tourists are advancing to enhance parts of castries through the OECS Regional Tourism Competitiveness Project. The project which is being funded by the World Bank seeks to enhance the competitiveness of tourism in the region by facilitating movement of tourists between the participating countries using ferries, improving selected tourism sites, and strengthening capacity for regional tourism market development. Here's Nisha Chow. The Government of St. Lucia has identified the Castries City Tourism Product as a priority for St. Lucia with targeted investment sites and activities aimed at making downtown castries more pleasant and attractive to tourists as well as residents. As part of the OECS Regional Tourism Competitiveness Project, government intends to implement several investment initiatives to revitalize downtown castries. These include the pedestrianization of the William Peter Boulevard, the upgrading of sidewalks, works for the improvement of the visited experience walking through castries, and the upgrading of the Castries Central Market. As it relates to the William Peter Boulevard, Project Manager Dr Lorraine Nicholas says the upgrade would ultimately add economic value to the area. So the fundamental aim is to really make the William Peter Boulevard a more pedestrian-friendly space, a space that is more conducive to relaxation, a space that is more conducive to hassle-free shopping, so a place where locals and visitors can go and sit and enjoy local cultural entertainment as well as dine, have a cup of coffee. The underlying aim is to bring more money into the economy so that we can benefit more from the tourism sector. Also forming parts of the OECS Regional Tourism Competitiveness Project is a façade improvement program for existing small businesses. Façade improvements are a means of enhancing the economic viability of these businesses, as well as improving the aesthetic image and the attractiveness of the broader Castries Central Business District neighborhood to retail customers and visitors. Under the ORTCP, we will be the government of St. Lucia given financial incentives to the property owners. So this would be in the form of matching grants, 50-50. The idea is that a business would put some of the funds and the government would put the other half of the financing, ranging up to 10,000 US dollars. And one might ask, persons might say, why doesn't the government give all of the money? Well, it is a case where you would not want this to be there to be interest simply because it is free money. Persons see it as free money and so they jump on board. You want there to be a level of ownership that persons see that there is value in doing this. It is their building, it is their property. This is what is being developed and the government is contributing to it. Some 15 million US dollars has been airmarked for St. Lucia under the project. Another project taking place within the government is the Hironora International Airport redevelopment and works currently underway there. The project is now in its first phase, which will include the preparation of the site for the construction, the General Manager of the St. Lucia Air and Seaport Authority, Mr. Darren Snack, informed the GIS that the renovations will include a brand new 337,000 square foot terminal building, new road infrastructure and new parking aprons to Keeta for the increasing capacity at the airport. Besides the physical infrastructure, what you will be seeing a lot of improvement is customer experience in terms of the human comfort, in terms of the technology that will be used at the airport. I do want to see too much of the technology now but we are really to build a first class will airport in this part of the world and we are very, very, very excited and proud to be a part of this project. Mr. Snack also informed that a new improvement will allow for a more climate resilient structure. The standards that are used for, for example, seismic loading, and I say, it's a little easier, that's earthquakes. The standards that we've used for hurricane, category five hurricanes, on this project are even higher than what we use for local and again this project is done in consultation with our designers who have a local engineering support, professional engineering support team with them. So that has been taken into account as well as we spoken about the flood mitigation. So there are many steps that we have taken. We had a World Bank DVRP project that recommended the level to construct so that has been incorporated in the design and there are other interventions through our partners in the Department of Infrastructure that been undertaken. That was a general manager stance for them, Mr. Darren Snack. And the redevelopment project at the Hirona International Airport is estimated as $175 million. So look there at some of the stories making the news from the government of St. Lucia. Brian? Yes, Lisa, certainly we've got our first three stories in our new segment and certainly great areas of focus, the Souffre Square, something that has really brought a lot of joy to the citizens and the members of the community down there in Souffre. We also looked at the ORTC and we know that the plans have always been around the blade in terms of what's really going to happen in the redevelopment of the city of Castries and the Hirona International Airport redevelopment project. And it's very timely to be in focus on our program today. And Devin, you could see how these projects tie into in one focused area of absolute development for the country. And while it may seem that it is centered completely around tourism, which is true to a fact, however, it also enhances the daily lives of St. Lucia. I'm thinking of Souffre and I'm now excited about taking a trip down there with my own family. I've had a number of friends who said that they went last weekend and how much fun it was. But I'm thinking now that we're going to be seeing a shift in the domestic tourism, we don't talk much about that and that's important for St. Lucia to be able to get out and enjoy the sights and sounds. The beauty of St. Lucia, we have people who pay thousands of dollars to come to St. Lucia to enjoy it, but it's right here with us. And we do not do enough of that. So my thinking is now we could also see we now have staycation on. And so St. Lucia can now begin to say, well, there's something to do to pick up the family, go down an additional attraction down in Souffre, if not to just take pictures, be at the square, take some pictures, see what the improvements are like. It should be a very exciting time. And I'm looking forward to when works will begin if the hope of decentralization for the William P. de Beauvoir. Yes. Souffre certainly has been in the spotlight of it and it mentioned earlier the fact that the Hummingbird Beach Park and the groundbreaking ceremony for the whole sporting infrastructure project being put on by governments. So that's in itself really wet the appetite for what is really going to happen right now. And then since we had the opening of the square, the official opening and we saw the pictures come in live out of Souffre that evening and how much the community really got involved with it. And the Beach Park is something that really enhances, the product itself gives a greater opportunity for economic development within the community of Souffre for the members of the community to maybe get into small businesses. We also noticed that the sporting persons within the area being given the encouragement that they're going to have some set up the art facilities and also a new cricket ground down at Robey. So that in itself set up and then the whole project in terms of the old traffic with the terminal and it's really transformed the town and now where they're opening up the square, the buzz I'm sure will be around for quite some time. Now in the city of Castries, we know it's really going to take some getting used to it with the boulevard not being filled with persons commuting via vehicular traffic and now just more into a pedestrian city would be quite interesting. We bring a different life to the city as well where that sort of bustling feel and I mentioned family again because my story is coming out of my family coming from my mother, my grandmother often spoke about how the city of Castries back before used to be this sort of hub especially at night where families can take a stroll and enjoy the scenery with all of the window displays and so forth. So it'll be interesting to see how we can incorporate some of that old sort of appeal of what Castries used to be and put it incorporated into so a new appeal as well. So it would be something interesting for St. Lucia to see how we can raise Castries, the city of Castries back to prominence. The human or international airport development project and something that has been around for quite some time and the entire nation and the traveling public will be looking forward to that. And for the human or international airport for St. Lucia, it's a mammoth project but it's a very necessary project. Once we are able to get that complete and I think the exponential growth that we see in the tourism industry, it can only begin to sort of add the sort of value to the St. Lucia tourism product. St. Lucia now is moving towards more of a sort of high end brand and we need facilities that will complement that because if you are attracting visitors, they're going to pay the monies to come in, we have to be able to give them the sort of amenities and facilities that correlates with what that high end brand is. And for St. Lucia as well, for our own national pride, for our feel, even when we travel, we get to use that very same facility. We don't want to have one treatment when we get to places like Miami, LAX and so forth. And then when we are at the human or international airport, a vastly different sort of environment. So if we can step in sync with what's happening globally, I think we can feel good about having a facility that is world-class. Yes, Lisa, we certainly look forward to it. Well, at this point, we'll take our first break on our program. We'll be back on InFocus. Human trafficking happens in plain sight. Know the signs, see it, report it. To report suspected cases of human trafficking, call the TIP hotline at 847. A thought for the damage that they'll deliver. No. Think about the children. Think about the children. Save it. Pulse and GMOs are not the solution. Use organic enjoyment. Excessive agrochemical use, additives, and genetically modified foods are harmful to health and the environment. Join the Good Food Revolution. Grow, buy and consume organic. A message from Ryan St. Lucia and the Ministry of Sustainable Development with funding from the GEF Small Grants Program, UNDP. The Good Food Revolution. Welcome back. We will have the introduction of our special guest, Lisa. Yeah, and special guest indeed. InFocus, we are very, very happy to have Prime Minister Honorable Alan Chastney with us as our first guest. We'll be looking at some of the key areas and we heard from the Prime Minister during the budget address for 2019-2020 that the government is focusing on some very key areas that will sort of generate the economic activity and sustain it as well. We won't have time to go through all of the key areas but we'll zero in on some of the, what we consider to be the prime ones. So the government has been engaging restructuring the economy as we heard from the Prime Minister during the budget address. And to do that, to centralize it, there's a medium term development plan for the period 2019-2022. We've begun to see some shift in the economy. Last figures we heard that the economy had grown and by some 8% since the Alan Chastney Administration took office. And so we want to say good morning to Prime Minister Alan Chastney and talk to us about what putting this plan together was like. Just give us sort of an encapsulation of that thought process because when you found the economy you'd always said that it was not growing as it should to sustain St. Lucia. So what was the thinking behind developing this plan? So the process of developing the plan really started in 2013 when I took over as the leader of the United Workers Party. And the first thing that we did was we went on a retreat with about just over 100 of our party supporters. Young, old, I've been there for a long time, new entrants into the market, different farmers, workers, business people. And we developed a vision, mission and value for the party. And so the vision of the party was that we were going to focus on delivering a globally competitive education system. So an education system that didn't just get you so you had a certificate but a quality of education that would allow you to compete against foreigners coming into St. Lucia and also that if you traveled that you would be able to get a job abroad. That we said that we would have a affordable quality healthcare. We said that everybody would have security regardless of where you lived. And the fourth one was that we would create economic opportunity. So those were the fundamentals of what United Workers Party was all about. So once we've achieved that, then the basic, the next thing is we've then started reviewing the country. We created, I think it was six different groups that looked at the country and achieving that vision. So once that had been finalized, we then brought it all together and it was then displayed in our party manifesto. And that's why we've always said that our party manifesto was not generated by polling. It was generated by what we thought the country needed to be able to grow. The next thing that I personally believe in is determining what the potential is rather than percentage growth. So I always use the example of a kid who's getting a 40% school mark and comes home and says to his mother, I'm doing 10% better, right? He's still failing, right? The goal should be about getting 100% not about the percentage improvement. Percentage improvement is our milestones in terms of getting to the global picture. So the question becomes, what's the potential of Saint Lucia? Who's really actually sat down and tried to figure that out? And so without getting into a lot of scientific numbers, we said, okay, Saint Lucia has a population of 170,000 people and we have a gross domestic product GDP of about $1.7 billion. Barbados, our neighbor, has a population of 270,000 people and they have a GDP of just under $5 billion. The Bahamas has a population of 370,000 people, 200,000 more than Saint Lucia, and has a GDP of $12 billion. And when you look at the Bahamas, NASA is $8 billion and Paradise Island is $4 billion. Aruba, 110,000 people, has a GDP of $3.5 billion. Malta has a population of 400,000 people and has a GDP of $12 billion. So the question becomes, where do we think that Saint Lucia should be? Given our population and the physical size of our country and if we look at what our neighbors are currently doing and we think that the minimum GDP that we should be at is around $4, 4.5 billion, but probably idealistically we should be targeting $6 or $7 billion. So if we are now to triple the size of our economy, we said, okay, what would be the constraints? If you imagine just even doubling the size of our GDP, what would be the obvious constraints to preventing that from happening? So what would be the industries that we would be depending on to be able to have that kind of growth? Well, tourism, agriculture, the IT sector, financial services, what we call a secondary home market, which means that we need more arrivals. The current airport couldn't cope with any more arrivals. Physically the plant couldn't and there was no workplace to park the planes. We'd run out of space. So certainly if you're going to double or triple the size of your economy, at minimum you would be doubling or tripling the number of arrivals that you currently have. So physically the airport couldn't cope with that. The road network, so imagine more people going to work transporting more agricultural produce, the level of activity you're taking, the road network wouldn't be able to cope with that. We have a problem right now. We are sharing our cargo facility and castries with the cruise industry. And so last year we were in a lot of problems. We had a lot of ships waiting on the outside because there was no space for them to come in. In fact some ships started to go to Barbados and break down the cargo and send it on smaller boats to San Lucia. So it means we have to be able to solve that problem. Water, big problem. We were struggling to just keep pace with what the current demand is. Imagine if the economy tripled in size and there was this huge increase in consumption of water. That would be a major problem. The government, I mean the government's struggling to deliver the services to people, getting your driver's license and getting your passports, getting your certificates, just your daily interaction with government. Government would struggle if the economy got bigger. So basically what we did is we went through that process and identified where all those constraints were and then started putting a program together. Now we know that in order to be competitive on a global basis that we have to focus on some critical things. Security. We've got to solve any forms of crime that are threatening to our citizens and their level of confidence and certainly towards anybody we're looking to invest in San Lucia. The quality of our healthcare needs to be substantially changed and whereas we're not offering tertiary level healthcare whether that's going to be in Mark Neek, whether that's going to be in Miami, whether that's going to be somewhere else or potentially is there an opportunity of creating tertiary level health facilities in San Lucia which would never be supported only by our local economy but would have to be supported by what we call medical tourism. So we went through that process of identifying all those different things and that's why when we campaigned we talked about building a new San Lucia. Now you know some people get nervous or concerned when a political party talks about a manifesto. I say oh this is politics. But the fact is a manifesto was voted on. It was a referendum. The party presented their manifesto. We presented our manifesto. So the fact that we got the popular vote by over 60%, that becomes now what the choice that solutions have made. And so that is what drives that overall arching policy and it's then now for us to meet with the civil service, the government in order to be able to implement these different programs. But the clear thing is we had a very clear vision of what we wanted to be able to achieve that we believed was absolutely measurable and it was comprehensible. Meaning this wasn't just about making building a San Lucia for tourist. It's not just about building a San Lucia for farmers. It's about building a San Lucia for everyone. It has to be able to meet every single individual's needs. I think the last thing I can say on that is that what we found that there was in commonality is that no one problem had one solution. So let's take... And everything is sort of intelligent. Everything is intelligent. So if you take crime as an example, just saying that the policemen are going to be more present isn't going to solve the problem. We have a thousand case backlog on criminal cases. A thousand cases. I mean, we're having to now look at bringing two judges only to deal with the backlog. That's $13.5 million. Policemen didn't have a communication system. Police cars were in dire need of changing. The forensic lab was not working. We didn't have courthouses. The police 9-1-1 and fire were not really operational. So it required a holistic change to be able to solve the problem. We'll talk about that in detail a little later on. But on the aspect of the economy, how do you rate yourself now? Because we're now into the eighth month of 2019. And how do you see the medium-term development plan working out in terms of being able to generate jobs? We have seen a decline in that jobless rate. Just the burden-butter issues for St. Lucian's. Businesses. Do you find yourself being satisfied that there's buoyancy in the economy right now? That's all a very difficult question for a politician to answer. I am heartened by the fact that the policies that we've implemented have been yielding the results that they have been. So in the absence of any major capital projects, construction projects, that we've seen government revenue increase and we're seeing the economy grow and we're seeing unemployment coming down. So once now the physical projects start, that's going to take it to the next level. I am very comfortable as to where we are and the strategies that we have implemented. Where I am not happy is because it can't happen fast enough. So anytime that you know that people continue to suffer in this country is worrisome to me. And I know how difficult it is for some people in this country. I mean, so we'll get talking about healthcare. There's over 40,000 people that really don't have access to healthcare in this country. So even though there is a Victoria or there are doctors, they just can't afford to go. And Solution is a lot of them. If they owe $200 to Victoria, that's enough to deter them from going because they feel bad about going. So the new system that we're going to be introducing, which we'll be giving in healthcare insurance to those 40,000 people, is going to be a fundamental change in their life. Do you believe that for what do we not understand about investment and how to attract investment? Because there's a concern that perhaps the government is the economy being driven simply by public sector projects, the risk involving that inherent risk involved in that. What would you say to that concern? It's an ideology and a philosophy and I think that that's really a fundamental difference between the two political parties and how I describe it as I describe it that we are a government that believes that we must earn our revenue and I think that the Labour Party believed that it was entitled. So meaning that if there was insufficient monies available through taxation to pay for the things that we need to invest in the Labour Party's response historically has been to increase taxes. That's what we call a form of entitlement. Whereas we believe in the lead night workers party that we need to earn it. So when I see that we're not earning enough taxes what it says to me is that there's some structural problems in the economy. There's something that's constraining the economy from being able to grow which requires government to change policies or to fix something. So when we came in we genuinely believed that the country was being overtaxed. So it means that for every percentage increase in tax that was happening you were not getting a percentage or higher of revenue. In fact you were getting less. So for instance when the VAT rate went from 0 to 15%, parallel to that corporate taxes dropped from 95 million to 55 million. Why? Because a lot of small businesses got squeezed out. A person who had a hairdressing salon all of a sudden having to pay 15% VAT on their rental rate. And that happened right away, got to the point where they couldn't afford to pay their rent. And if they couldn't afford to pay their rent and they couldn't afford to keep their business going they moved into their home. And so the people that they had employed they lost their jobs. And so a small company that was paying some corporate tax now was paying nothing. So we came in and we lowered the VAT rate. And what happened is that we lost nothing on the VAT revenue but now corporate tax went from 70 million dollars to 95 million dollars. And total government revenues went from 950 million to 1.2 billion dollars. So that's a great example of the expectations. And we think that the ease of doing business we must be concerned about. How long does it take to open up a company? How long does it take people to process their applications? And when laws are not very clear and have multiple of the definitions and depending on who you go to they tell you what they feel it is and then years later somebody says well that was the wrong interpretation these are aggravating things which reduces people's confidence to want to be able to do business in solution. So for instance one of the new things that we introduced is the headquarters act which allows foreign companies or even local companies to open up a headquarters in St. Lucia. They pay no corporate tax there's no work permits and you can bring anybody from anywhere and whoever is working whether there's solution or foreign don't pay any income tax. So we have now almost nine companies operating in St. Lucia under that. So that's right now I think it's something like 350 jobs that would not have existed in St. Lucia and are now in St. Lucia. But as a consequence of it take the Johnson's building up at Rodney Bay. For years that building was empty. By introducing the headquarters act and some changes that we made to the fiscal it's full. So these are the things that are very important in terms of being able to drive your economy. Are you meeting your capacity? Are you improving the productivity? And are you improving your overall efficiency? So Arthur Lewis College the programs that we're turning out there are the kids that we're turning out are they immediately making an impact wherever they're going to work. Government must continuously ask the effectiveness of its programs otherwise it's just an expenditure. And so if it's not and then business people are having to retrain those people it's lost time and lost effort and we're not achieving the support that we need to be able to grow our economy. On the public sector and just my final question to you on this the debt to GDP ratio the concern is not just from St. Lucia but you know we've always had the sort of caution flags coming from the international and financial institutions like the IMF, the World Bank and so forth. Where do we stand now on how conscious are you as Minister for Finance about St. Lucia's debt to GDP ratio? I have no choice but to be conscious of it because it's something that's unfortunately used as a major statistic. So when we came into government the debt to GDP was 69% as we speak today at 64.5% so we're continuously seeing that number being declined. The naysayers want to suggest that because we are financing the airport as an example through the mechanism that we are that that's going to increase the overall debt to GDP. And there really is two answers to that question. So one it is the more important ratio is what percentage of your revenue is going to finance debt. That's the most important. Can you afford the debt that you have? So what we have done as a government is any new debt that we've taken on we've made sure that we have a new revenue stream. So we're not taking any of the existing so the $1.2 billion in additional tax monies that we've generated none of that is going to pay for the airport or for the roads. We introduced an airport tax which we went from $25 to $98 and we introduced a gas tax. Those two new revenue streams are what are being used now to fund most of the new debt that we're taking on. So there is no fiscal pressure on my part. The next thing I have to ask is if in fact I don't invest in the airport because we're scared of taking on the debt right? Can the economy grow? And I think the answer is very clear it cannot because if I don't have a new airport terminal I can't get new airlift if I can't get new airlift then I'm not going to get people to build any new hotel rooms. So it's the chicken and an egg. Now the argument that the Labour Party is making with regards to the PPP. So the IMF had recommended to San Lucia that what we do is we make what we call an SPV a special purpose vehicle at the airport. And the way that that would work is the government would lease the airport facility to a third party and that they would be in complete control of the revenue as well as all the decisions that are being made at the airport. So that it's independent of the government of San Lucia. But the money to pay for the debt was still coming from the airport tax. So the condition of doing that was that the government was going to increase the airport tax to $55 and they were arguing that it should be $60. So it's our revenue. So the point that we were making is that when we looked at the numbers that if you had 400,000 arrivals today and you have 2,000 new rooms coming on you have potentially a cruise ship home porting facility coming on let's say minimum it increases by 100,000. Although those numbers would suggest it's going to increase substantially more. We can pay for the debt in less than 10 years. Why would I continue to give a third party the $60 per head for 30 years? And what are they going to do with all that money? Whereas we're saying we have to build a north-south highway. There's more infrastructure that we have to build. So let's get the airport paid for it. Use the money for the next 20 years to be able to now pay for all these different things. I can get away with that because I've shown the IMF and I've shown the World Bank that this is not affecting my day-to-day operations because this revenue is being lockboxed. We have insurances in place if there's any downfalls. We have provisions in our loan agreements that if in fact that there is a natural catastrophe or a force majeure that we don't have to pay the debt until we're back up on our feet again. So all those provisions have been put in place in order to be able to protect us. So debt to GDP is a very important number in the world globally but I think that the more important number is your debt ratio which is the amount of debt that you have, the payments of your debt relative to your income. And we're continuing to see that number fall well below the prudent level. So there is, I can't say ever no hope, but the reality is Sanusha is not any financial danger at this point. All of the new debt we've been taking on is more than compensated in the numbers we have. So for instance, even the $35 that we've put into the lockbox is 20% more than we need to be able to finance the loan. Plus we've got the provisions in the loans to protect us in case of natural disasters. So we have to grow this economy, we must grow this economy responsibly. I think the concern that the World Bank and the IMF had when my government came into office and some of our policies was really, they felt that if we dropped the VAT rate that we would have lost $55 million. They felt that if we increased the airport tax we would have reduced the number of arrivals that we had and they felt that if we introduced the gas tax we would have created inflation. So for the first year my government agreed not to spend any of the additional income just in case they were right. So what happened? So the VAT revenue was supposed to have dropped by $55 only dropped by $15 and by the second year we were already at level where we were. So there was no impact on that. The second one was that the tourism arrivals would have gone down. Well we had a record year of arrivals and we've continued to see those arrivals numbers grow because as we said to them when people are buying a hotel package to come to St. Lucia they're not buying an airline ticket. So it's your hotel stay, your tours, everything are in one price so increasing it by $75 was going to be no impact and furthermore the average airport tax in the region was $100 and St. Lucia was at $25 and we were seeing no benefit means that that extra $75 is actually going to the bottom line of the airlines not necessarily to us or being passed on to the tourist. And then the third one was that we would have seen inflation well the fact that you brought down the VAT rate countered the any potential of inflation by the gas tax. So once they saw that then everybody was very, very good and we've now proceeded to be able to allocate those funds to stimulate the necessary infrastructure we need. You brought up the PPP and the fourth one is what makes St. Lucia's situation different to that of say a Jamaica where it has gone full thought with the PPP on its airport development. Very excellent. I was in Jamaica as you remember with Air Jamaica and I was there at the time. Jamaica's debt to GDP was about 150%. So Jamaica was not in a position to take on any of the debt. Barbados which was at 170% is not in a position to have taken on. Now imagine a couple years ago when they were at 100% they didn't do it through a PPP. They did the expansion of the airport themselves. It's only now that they realize they made a mistake and that they didn't put jetways in. So to go and put the jetways in now is a significant capital investment they're going to have to make and there's no way with the current debt to GDP that they have they can do that. So in the case of St. Lucia our debt to GDP is 64%. The prudent level is 60%. So we're in a much better position to be able to do that and the monies and the savings to the state by doing it the way that we're doing it is huge. As I said to you, we're talking about almost $600 million in 30 years assuming that we only go to 500,000 passengers. If you go past 500,000 passengers it's even more than that of monies that now would be collected by the state and could be applied to investing in our infrastructure versus that money is going into a third party. That third party person exclusively could make the decision as to how they were going to spend that money. Mr. Prime Minister, you did actually give us a good rundown as to how diverse the economy is on some of the areas that are needed and some of the key areas to sustain the economy including GDP growth and VAT and its impact and the reduction of the national debt. But we also know that a useful partner is the private sector. If you can speak a bit on the support the government is going to continue to learn to the private sector to enable the economy to continue to really flourish and realize the sort of growth that you're looking for. Our involvement with the private sector is multitude. So first of all, by running a good country, by making your macro accounts so things like your debt to GDP, your debt ratio financing, your overall unemployment rate, improving your credit rating, all those things automatically make it easier for the private sector to be able to do business. The new E-government that we want to be able to introduce will significantly improve the ability of our countries to be competitive. We had promised in our manifesto that we were going to put $10 million into SLDB. We've put 20 and we're currently trying to make sure that some of the monies that we're going into the economic fund that those monies will be able to also go into Solution Development Bank to be used for home mortgages and for equity financing. So on a fiscal basis, those are the kinds of things that we're doing and by lowering taxes. So lowering the VAT rate from 15% to 12.5%. We've just introduced a new personal income tax. So it means that we've now increased the threshold that where people need to pay personal income tax, which was previously at $18,000. Now it's going to go to $24,000. Now that's huge because that means that the pressure to put an increase in wages on becomes less because people are automatically seeing that their net wage has actually gone up. We're in the process of reviewing our corporate income tax. So the idea is to harmonize our corporate tax and to bring our corporate tax rate down closer to 15% than the 30% it currently is at. The other big thing that we're doing is where government has assets that we don't have the capital to be able to develop those assets. We're trying to work with the private sector. So for instance, housing. The government is going in and putting land into a company, allowing monies to be borrowed by a contractor to do the subdivisions, put in all the infrastructure, sell the lots, and then once he's sold the lots, then government gets paid back for the land. So that means the developer doesn't have to buy the land. He's saving on his taxes that he's paying on the land. And meanwhile, the population is benefiting from more affordable housing because if I had to now go and borrow the money myself, it now means my debt to GDP ratio goes up. It starts constraining the ability of me to be able to pay for my current financing. So these are the kinds of partnerships we're looking at. Casteries redevelopment. Fixing up the water problems in castries. We're still dumping raw sewage into port castries. Utilities underground. Making more clear space. So let's look as an example, castries market. Castries market will become, I promise you, the number one attraction in San Lucio by the investment that we're going to be making, which is about 10 million to 12 million U.S. dollars we're investing. For those who've traveled and have gone to a market called Burroughs Market in London, it's very similar to what we're going to be trying to do here. And it's also to understand that the vendor is not the artisan. So how can we now improve the quality of our artisans? Get the vendors to actually be franchisees. So I would love to see where the vendors have different uniforms, and they're representing different businesses. So when I go to Miami to a mall, in the middle of the mall, there are all these little kiosks, that's what we're trying to create with our vendors. So now you have more business people. So it means that they can have a product, they know what the price is going to be, they're given a uniform, the stall is designed for them, they're told what the pricing is going to be, and more importantly, they're told about selling the product. So it means that they're adding value to the sale. You remember me from my days of director of tourism, and I used to lament what I used to call the mercy purchase. So when our vendors would sit there and look all sad, and the person would really be buying it, they wanted the product because they're trying to help. Nobody leaves that transaction satisfied. The customer is going, I don't want to come back to this place because I really don't like seeing this level of poverty. The person who sold it hasn't added any value, and I know that in their heart of heart, they know they have not done it. I mean, they're obviously grateful for the money, but they're not happy or feel good about themselves that the person has left with any level of satisfaction. So the next one really is office spaces. So take the Diherm wall. We're going to be announcing a deal with the Diherm wall very soon, where we're doing a joint venture with a person where they will purchase the ground floor of the building. We will own the next two floors, but the developer now will fix up those two floors. So here's a building. How many people is it employing? Zero. How many taxes, dollars are being generated on a daily basis from that location? Zero. How many solutions are having an opportunity to be able to enhance their life? Zero. But here is where we can now get a private sector person to put the money onto the table, use government's tax incentives in order to be able to cause the development to be able to take place. Obviously, we do that on a regular basis with the manufacturers, and so we're trying very hard to be able to grow that industry. The big one really has been the introduction of NAPS, the National Apprenticeship Program. The fundamental difference between NAPS and NICE, same amount of money, the difference is instead of NAPS employing people and paying $1,500 per person indefinitely and a job that would only exist if NICE was paying for it. In the case of NAPS, we're paying $500 for 18 months and the private sector person is paying the remaining amount of money. And then after 18 months that job is completely taken over by the private sector person. OJO is a great example where they came in. That technology didn't exist here. In fact, it didn't exist in the Caribbean. Nobody had opened up an artificial intelligence operation in the Caribbean. And we were the first. They have gone from 26 kids to I think they're close to 400. And we're hoping that by next summer they'll be close to 700. But as we currently speak that company by itself is paying almost $500,000 a fortnight in salaries. That's $500,000 that didn't exist in the south. That's a million dollars a month. That's $12 million a year in salaries. Plus there's over eight bus companies that are now providing the bus transportation because it runs a shift system three times a day. It has its own kitchen and which they've adopted now farmers. So these are businesses that didn't exist. So government recognizes that we can help reduce the cost of getting businesses in, help them in the first couple of years of reducing the risk and making a success of it. But then it becomes win-win all around. After 18 months the government says you won your award. Yeah, the 18 months only applied to 150 people. And then everybody else after that it applies for one year. And in the first instance it was $1,000 for the first six months and $500 thereafter and now it's only $500 a month afterwards. We also opened up a second company with them in which we did the same deal. And that's if they can bring other companies now also to invest. We're going to announce some new investors coming in so we've seen one of the fastest growth areas in terms of employment. Tourism has done well but the fastest growing has really been in the IT sector. So KM2 have had a substantial increase. There's two other operations up in the Rodney Bay area that have continued to expand. And we've also seen Ojo expanding and the invest a mission where they had six major companies coming down. And so two of those companies are about to announce their expansion into San Lucia. We believe that the Daiher Mall that we're going to be able to dedicate almost 70,000 square feet to the call centers. In the remaining time that we have let's look at the security aspect. Because all of this investment will be for naught if safety is not under control. We have announced that the CCTV program is moving afoot. We've announced something in the region of $11 million of an investment to secure those cameras the installation and for the command center as well. So give us an update as to where we're at and are we already at the implementation phase for that? Are we actionized with that? You know for security reasons we can't say exactly where they are located but is it up and running if not when? The CCTV cameras are already up and running. The command center is up and running. There was one final glitch which is to get flow and digicel to interface no surprise but that should be done by this week so it means that when you call 911 and your call comes in it will locate where that call is coming from and the cameras that are in that area would be activated so it means the person who is answering the phone is actually going to be given a lot more information they've ever had before. Several accidents have taken place on the Cassry's Grosley highway and we're now able to go and look at the cameras. What's being reported back to me is people who have been having accidents and you know everybody is always the other person's fault. Once they show the people the video then claims are being settled much quicker. We had an incident a couple of weeks back where somebody was by the VG roundabout and was involved in an accident and they died. The claim was that the car next to him had hit him so once we had reviewed the cameras we found that that was not the case. In fact the person had an attack when he was in the car so the accident was entirely caused by himself unfortunately. We've had incidences in terms of drug interdictions and so we're able to follow people. But I want to say to you that the CCT cameras as well as the communication systems that the policeman had because when we came in policemen were communicating on their own phones so they had to have their own cell phone, they were paying for their own time and then if they were apprehending somebody they would have to call 911 like the rest of us in order to be able to communicate. All the vehicles now have the VHF unit to it the hand-held units are now being distributed as well as with the firemen, the waterproof and the marine police all waterproof equipment. That's going to go a long ways in being able to help. We have 40 SPCs that are coming on board within the next two weeks and they are being allocated to be doing more foot patrols in hotspots. We recognize that hotspots rotate so we look at statistics on a weekly basis to be able to make that level of determination. The court backlog so physically the court space as well as the access and number of judges that we currently have. If in fact the forensic lab the police collection of evidence, CCT cameras are working better it means that we go to the cases much more prepared and we've seen very clearly that when you have that kind of evidence people plead guilty much quicker and therefore the system works much much much better. We also believe that we now need to look at the Bordelais facility we now have a new parole board in place I'm very grateful to my wife because she raised a fair amount of money and was able to give some facilities at Bordelais and I think that we solutions have to change our attitude. We've committed a crime but the goal has to be that we can reform as many of them as possible and as a layman not difficult to figure out do we genuinely believe that the way that Bordelais is currently designed and is operating that people have a fair chance of being reformed and I don't think it's a difficult question to be able to answer and so one of the things we are definitely looking at is a different penal system that gives everybody a greater opportunity to be reformed we're seeing that the vast majority of people who are in Bordelais are illiterate so and don't have a skill set so imagine somebody who's caught for something went into a completely different facility that was actually designed more like a house and a school and yes they're incarcerated but the fact is that they're being reformed from the day they get there and being taught how to become productive parts of our workforce and we're seeing that because in the last few years we've had a number of the inmates being successful at the CXC level so that is encouraging. It's encouraging and what encourages me that's in the current environment which is very much a penal colony and so therefore I think that that's something that we have to really look at and then we've said how do we get to the source of the problem and we've had this long discussion and I feel very disheartened because communication is a very difficult thing and some issues are very emotional and I clearly see that some statements I've made particularly about single mothers have been made to be interpreted very differently than what my intention was. I have great admiration I've always had great admiration for single mothers particularly ones that have a job and are creating an environment for their children despite the fact that they're the only person there. What I was concerned about and what I am passionate about is younger girls under the age of 18 who are finding themselves in a difficult situation and there isn't enough support from the state to help and what's making it worse is that we're into the third generation of that and we all know it's very difficult for them to get out of that and we also know statistically that the majority of criminals are coming from people who have that background. It doesn't make them bad people that's the point I'm trying to make It just means that the circumstances that they're in and we the citizens of this country cannot walk away from it. I think it's a universal thing because we've seen reports from the psychologists, world-renowned psychologists sociologists have indicated and even a recent study right here from Baudelais did indicate that for a vast number of the inmates that they come in from single parent households. I met with a person, I don't want to mention the person but they work in a program to deal with wayward boys and the stories of hearing kids who have never been told that they're loved ever right? And that you grow up in an atmosphere where you see your mother toiling and being taken advantage of how do you grow up with any level of empathy in your heart right? And what I want to say to solutions is we cannot run away from this. This will come back to us and we must have to play the part. I readily admit the state does not have enough resources. I've said that. How can we have what 12 or 14 social workers for the whole country right? We need in excess of 40 to 50 social workers to deal with the problems we have and maybe that may not even be enough. So in the absence of that let's not let time go by. If you were in a neighborhood where you see people who are suffering like that reach out. That's been the solution way right? Help these people. Let's not get into the blame game as to how they found themselves in that position. They are in that position. Now I've seen young ladies who have had a child under the age of 15 and either the single mother or the parents step in either adopt directly or support that child but that girl is made to go back to school and when you speak to these these young ladies later in life that was sufficiently enough to scare them and they really get on the straight narrow at that point. But the vast majority are not benefiting from that level of support and we as a country if we're going to reach our full potential must deal with that and the point here is that crime is not just about police presence it's not just about the judicial system it's not just about the overall level of equipment. It is about our morality. It's about who we are as a people and that's why this sports program that we're doing is so critical. I'm saying I'd rather see kids join clubs than instead of joining gangs. I mean we were two days ago where the Windward kids came back from a very successful tour and the enthusiasm the camaraderie that sports create was palatable. I've been part of it myself. It is irreplaceable what this can do and by improving the standard of sports the competitiveness of sports and also arts in our communities will go a long ways in distracting people from the wrong direction and put people more in the right direction and the values and the discipline that they learn at that younger age carries through and that's what I was saying it doesn't matter if you come last in a race did you do your best so if you participated in the marathon you came last but you broke your own personal best time you won because I know for you to have broken your personal best time required commitment and required a discipline everybody is at different standards but if you have that attitude of being a winner and wanting to push yourself and everybody has that then this country will progress and the mentality takes you through to the rest of your life correct we want to be able to move on to the health sector we want to give it some due time so we'll take a break now when we come back the health sector in focus we want to start anew and the health sector to improve we want to have a better America and to leave the race we want to do better we want to start a world we want to improve we want to take the best the best we want to improve the health sector to improve What is money laundering? Money laundering is the concealment of the origins of illegally obtained money typically by means of transfers involving financial institutions or legitimate businesses. There are three steps in the process of money laundering. One, placement. This is the movement of illegally obtained cash from its source into circulation through financial institutions. Two, layering. This is the act of concealing the source of that money using a series of complex transactions and bookkeeping tricks. Three, integration. This is the movement of previously laundered money into the economy mainly through the financial institutions and thus such monies appear to be normal business earnings. What is terrorist financing? Terrorist financing provides funds for terrorist activity. It may involve funds raised from legitimate sources such as donations, profits from businesses and charitable organizations, as well as from criminal sources such as the drug tree, the smuggling of weapons, fraud, kidnapping and extortion. There is an interrelation between terrorist financing and proliferation financing which is the act of providing funds or financial services used in the acquisition, manufacture or transport of weapons of mass destruction. How does money laundering and terrorist financing affect St. Lucia? St. Lucia can lose its reputation and international credibility, more violent and organized crimes and corruption, penalties for the financial sector and loss of correspondent banking. St. Lucia will be evaluated in 2019 with respect to its money laundering and terrorist financing regimes. How can you help? Get involved, learn about the threat that money laundering and terrorist financing pose to St. Lucia and cooperate with financial and non-financial institutions when information is requested. Money laundering and terrorist financing are crimes with penalties of up to $1 million and imprisonment of up to 10 years or both. A message brought to you by the National Anti-Money Laundering Oversight Committee and the Attorney General's Chambers. Thanks for staying with us in focus in this final segment. We'll be looking at the healthcare sector and we'll also be giving you your opportunity to place your calls and also send us your messages and your questions to the Prime Minister. As the Prime Minister, the health sector is something that has really engaged your government since coming into office and we can give you the opportunity to look at a number of areas that have given you the latitude to go into the same due situation in terms of the hospital and getting the facility back in operation. Primary health care upgrades and focuses on a souffle and then the hospital and finally the transition to the OKEU. You know, healthcare was one of the pillars that we spoke about in my manifesto. We talked about affordable quality healthcare and we understood in opposition when we saw what was going on that the government was struggling to find resources to be able to open up OKEU clearly. Because when you saw the quality of the facilities at Victoria and around the island, nobody would rightfully want to see that continue. And so the fact that the government couldn't move into OKEU told me before we got into there was a problem and when we got in I didn't realize how big of a problem. The problem that they'd had was one that you were going to have less beds at OKEU and so therefore the requirement was for us to upgrade the primary healthcare facilities and that no work and no money had been allocated to be able to do that. The second problem is as I indicated is the vast majority of people cannot afford to get healthcare. So the current system that we have where the money was being allocated on a quarterly basis to Victoria and that Victoria's operations were being supervised and managed by the government is just a no-no. I mean, when we went physically in a walk there, basic things that if there was a proper management system in place would not be there. How we registered the people, the blood bank database was on a DOS system. DOS, I mean, I think it's probably even before your time was, right? The old equipment that had not been moved because you had to go into a special departmented government. So you'd see a new condenser from an air conditioner right next to an old condenser. You go into the lab and half of the equipment in there is not working but and that creates a pervasive attitude of non-excellence. And so I have to say to you that the staff did an admirable job when it came to caring and empathy but they were not being supported by the infrastructure in that particular area. So there was no way that we could have moved into OKEU without a radical change towards how we're going to manage it. So if you look at St. Jude's as an example, even though it's in a stadium, what we call a non-purpose built facility, it actually runs operationally a better operation. So for instance, when you go to St. Jude's, they and you're insured, they collect the money. Victoria doesn't, right? And the whole mechanism to prescriptions, to your pharmacy, everything is interconnected. And the reason of that is because St. Jude's benefited from Mercy Hospital in 2001 that came down and put together their operating procedures. So we knew that we had to be able to have a proper operating procedure at OKEU. We had to solve the problem at the primary health level and then here becomes the big one is that the estimates were that we would go from $35 million operating cost at Victoria to a $70 million operating cost at OKEU. And I don't know if I believe that number because I know the $35 million at Victoria is grossly inadequate based on what I'm seeing. Right? You're going into a fully air conditioned facility. You're doing things that you've not done before. And then the big one that terrified me, I have to tell you on a personal basis, was going from what I call a mechanical system to an electronic system. So the bed was a crankbed at Victoria. You're now going to an electrical bed. When a crankbed breaks, it's very easy to get somebody to go and fix it. When that electronic bed, you can't bang it. It's not going to move. So what you have to do is your preventive maintenance becomes even more critical in that regard. So we have a call on the line. We want to say good afternoon to that quarter. Thank you so much. You are in focus. You have a question for the Prime Minister? Yes. Good afternoon, Mr. Prime Minister. Good afternoon, sir. Let me first thank you for the opportunity you take from your ambitious schedule to educate the populist about the performances of the government. I listened to you intensively and I appreciate it and some calling. I mean, you've given a very extensive view on the social and being improvement and also the economic improvement of the country at large. I feel that I as a resident in the south of the country, and I know you put a lot of emphasis in the development, improved development of the south of the country, there are many indicators that myself and other people residents in the south can see that there is economic improvement, some of which is what you put in the bank now in Newport and you know, even Schuazelle and these areas. And the lines are so huge. So that tells that should tell people that there is economic growth on the country. The amount of traffic in the south now is realized. It means that people have extra money in the pockets. I also always tell the minibus drivers in Newport but look at there is a van that sells some cruel bread that comes there on an afternoon. And when the Labour Party was in power, these vans used to come with just one basket of bread and sell and sometimes they go with balance of bread. Today, Mr. Prime Minister, these ones come there with free baskets at one time and they make sometimes two to four trips in the day. So I keep telling them, look, this is economic growth. It shows that people have extra money in the pocket to spend on bread and other things. You understand? So leaving that alone, congratulations to you and the government. There is also the focus that I should say the government should place on an area of creative industry sector. And this is the sector where I belong to. This sector, if the government plays a little bit more focus on it, I mean there are people who realize children who go to secondary schools, a lot of them drop out of school. I believe that that sector can be used to facilitate those kids, provide a little bit of training for them and get them into that sector and will get them out of the streets. So in that sense, I applaud the government on that. And I hope that the government will see like tourism. It creates so many linkages. So what we're doing is this whole club system that we're creating. And I use the example of the aquatic centre where you have one facility and there are eight clubs that have primary level and secondary level students. So this is what we're going to be emulating in all of the constituencies. So these new sporting facilities, which is being started with Souffre, is to make that happen. And part of that is also the arts. So that if I am a kid after school, I go back to my community and part of my club, my club will have sporting programs, but it will also have creative arts, drama, creative writing and film. I mean, my iPhone can produce songs. I could make a movie for my iPhone so that technology is there. So there's nothing that's limiting the ability for us to capture our creativity. And if you take, you know, one of my favourite groups, the Henry segment, you really have to put your hat up to these kids. And I remember during the campaign, leading up to the campaign, walking through Dennery and seeing these little studios that these guys had done. When they took mattresses and they had their creative area out back and they would go in and cut their song right away, the technology is there to allow kids to express themselves. And what we need to do is to continue to do that. So one of the big changes we've made, and I know that you listen would really appreciate this, CDS role is not to do events. CDS role is to continuously put on training programs to improve the quality of our arts. Correct. So songwriting, lyrics, stage presentations, all of those things. So even now when we see the reintroduction of steel pan is that they're going around and making sure that pan is being now taught at all the different school levels. But it's a habit, it's a difficult thing to break. And I know they've spoken to Danny and the board and they're, they can be involved in the events, but they can't be driving the events. Their job was not to put on carnival. We have another call online just before that point. So what's your question for the Prime Minister? Yeah, it's me again. I got caught off. I wanted to finish my point by saying to the Prime Minister, because I belong to a political party. I think I believe that... Okay, while we await the call to come through, we do have a question coming off Facebook. Hi, Jolie. Thank you so much for watching. And her question is, with an aim to build a new St. Lucia that can last changes, that can last changes in administration, what is the government's plans to reform the constitution and by extension reform our systems of local government and other core democratic institutions? Great question. I mean, we were had a retreat this week on local government. I'm a big believer in local government. I believe that my statement is online. So I would really strongly suggest to Jolie that she maybe go on my Facebook site. I think that some of the news channels are also had covered it. I'm a big believer in local government. I think that effective government can only be done at a local level. And with regards to constitutional changes, they require two-thirds majority. I've attempted on some levels to be able to get the opposition to participate with us. That's been very difficult. But I'm also going to say to Jolie that when I went around, there's still too many solutions that are struggling and aren't focusing on anything about constitution. They're focused on next meal, getting my kids to school, school books and stuff like that. And I think that the unemployment rate is a target, meaning it's moving in the right direction, getting more money in people's hands, improving our social network to be able to help people. And when we can start now getting more people participating and having confidence in the government, I mean, I have to tell you when I came in, people's confidence in government and politicians is probably at an all-time low. But the idea, but for the constitution reform has been in the cards for quite some time now, isn't that part of restoring the public's confidence and citizenry's confidence in government if we can hold to that? But before we continue at that point, we want to say thank you so much, Kola. What's your question for the prime minister? First and foremost, I just want to applaud the prime minister and his government for the good work they have been doing so far. At this we have been seeing a lot of things happening in the country. But I want to know realistically, what is it that the resolution I expect the government to do for the rest of the tenure to ensure that the government will retain government, come to the next general election? So I think if I, we had a little difficulty hearing, but I think if I got the gist of what the caller is asking, is for the government to remain or your plans for ensuring that the the plans and policies that you've stated in the manifesto, which has now become government policy, adhering to that. So I have a confession. The confession is that we as a party made a decision that we were not going to take the easy road and that we were going to make decisions that would take 10, 15 years to be able to see to its full fruition. Now the danger in doing that is that when you are being re-elected every five years that there has to be enough done that people still have confidence in. But in not doing that means you're cutting the the value and the opportunities of the people of St. Lucia short, because if you're going to make decisions that are always going to be just short term, very difficult. I am confident from what I've been seeing and I told everyone, you know, first hundred days and then first year and then second year, it takes three years of your out there campaigning, implementing for things to start seeing so people can visibly see. So Sufer is a great example. You know, the process in Sufer started after Hurricane Thomas. You know, we put together a very clear plan. We lost the elections. Unfortunately, the Labor Party either did not continue some of the work or did not have a plan themselves as to what they were going to do in five years as passed by. We came back in and we started exactly where we left it off and it's taken three years and now people, Hummingbird Beach, Old Trafford, the Square, very soon the stadium, the new hospital, the roads, it takes all those things coming together for then people to see the the full outcome. But there's sufficiently a sufficient number of things that have taken place that people are now becoming very enthusiastic. The same thing will happen in Ansaray, the same thing will happen in Rodney Bay once the castries market. The castries market has been in ISO for a long time. It's very difficult for people to envision it actually performing the way it's supposed to perform. And I guarantee you that when the work is completed that people are going to go, wow. Let's talk about completion. Everybody's anxious for the OKEU, for this opening. We've seen the transition in happening. We've seen services moving from Victoria Hospital to the OKEU. Where are we at right now in advancing completion of that process and the operationalization of OKEU? Because now we can see it's relatively open, but to operationalize it now. When and how are we going to see this happen? So we have a team headed up by Dr. Lisa Charles and we've just about hopefully finalizing the contract to have a company help us in wherever the shortcomings are going to be, particularly on the administrative side. One of the problems that we had in that location was that it had not been used for so long that the electrical breakers were faulting and we had to get new ones made. So those have now been put in. And so the short answer to your question is that we're hoping that by October 15th that we'll be fully operational at OKEU. That's October this year. October this year. We have a caller online. Hello, good afternoon. My question is for the Prime Minister. I'm a little, I'm a supporter of you all, but I have a little issue with the local government, especially the grass on the sides of the road. What are you planning on doing in this way for this time, a rainy season, to try and assist people because the grass is really over the road and it's a bit ridiculous. Thank you. That caller before you leave, we lost the call? So what we did is we, again it's not about tit for tat, but just really from a comparison change in a policy. The former government used to use the NICE program three times a year to do a stimulus and have people cut grass on the side of the road. So one, I have a difficulty that people who need support to cause them to go out and cut the grass on the side of the road to gain that support. There is no added value to the state. The grass grows back in three weeks, right? So what we did is we took the clearing of the main roads and put it back into the Ministry of Infrastructure. We're spending about 3.4, 3.5 million dollars a year and giving out monthly contracts now along those roads. And so we have a consistent program in order for the grass because the call is 100 percent right. This is critical particularly during the rainy seasons. I can tell you that there are some habits that are hard to break in government and going from the end of one year and starting up the new year, it's always the first quarter that seems to get squeezed out the most. And we're trying to fix that mechanism to prevent that from happening. But I would like to think that hopefully solutions, particularly in the last six to eight months, have seen a dramatic improvement in the cleaning of the sides of the roads throughout the length and the breadth. Local government will maintain the responsibility of cleaning the roads on the tertiary and the secondary level roads in their communities. The one exception, well, Cassree City Council has always been doing that, but we're now empowering and emboldening our local governments to be able to do that. So the cleaning of public facilities and sporting facilities and the sides of the roads in their communities will be, it's under local government, but the primary roads, the main roads are being done by the Ministry of Infrastructure on a monthly basis. Mr. Prime Minister, we're going to wrap up soon. You didn't, when the call started coming in, you didn't really get a chance to wrap up in St. Jude. Maybe there's a good note for us to end on so you can tell us a bit more on your vision. On healthcare, we're finishing off with getting OKEU in. Critical to that and critical to healthcare is healthcare insurance. So the World Bank is supporting us in terms of designing a program. We're working with NIC to hopefully be the administrator of the insurance. It means that every single solution now will have access to insurance. The 40,000 plus people who currently can't afford to go to healthcare means they can go and see a doctor. If they get a prescription, they're going to get their medicine. If they need to get x-rays, everything literally up until tertiary level of healthcare will be covered under the insurance. Now that's huge. So it means a person now who potentially is going to become diabetic or is potentially going to get a stroke because of high blood pressure, we can identify that earlier and it means that they're going to have access to medicine to be able to help them. Because the hope is that they'll be able to visit the doctor more. Can they afford it? To get intervention. Correct. It's cheaper for the state, I hate putting it that way, to make sure that a person is having access to medicine than waiting for the person to need dialysis. Because you have a humanitarian problem and then the cost goes up considerably at that point. The final points of the insurance, have we been able to work that out as the government worked it out? So the paper will be presented to the government before the end of this year. It'll be approved by cabinet, by January. It will then be going to parliament and then we hope to be able to have it implemented starting in April 1st of next year. And so we're looking at how many, what is the proposal on the table for the models? Can you disclose what that is? But we're looking at three different models too. We're looking at multi-to-law. They're looking at all the costs. The key comes down to costs. And I think that maybe the fundamental point here is government will continue to pay for the salaries of the nurses and the doctors at the hospitals and the primary level services. We'll continue to pay for the utilities. Really what we want the insurance to be able to cover is the medicines and the private doctor time as well as radiology and all the services you're going to need. So it means that the premium ought to be at a level that's very affordable. Government will pay the premium for the more vulnerable. So elderly people below a certain pension level, unemployed, the poverty list, the vulnerable list, all those people government will pay. And so that's why I'm saying to you that moving into OKEU requires us to have these systems in place and to have a system that can collect the insurance. Now once I'm collecting the insurance number, I can now tie my inventory system. So when you're going in, I know what services you used and therefore it has to tally back to the inventory system. So this is where the management process comes in. We're also going to be introducing a health authority. The responsibility of the health authority is to do a couple things. One, work with the private doctors and everybody else to come up with a fixed price list for services. Two, to license all of the doctors and all of the facilities to make sure there's no abuse. The doctors aren't giving out false prescriptions to take advantage of the insurance system. Those are the things that cause the insurance prices to be able to go up. So we're putting all those mechanisms in place. I think this solution will become a model for a lot of other places once we've got that accomplished. Then you have St. Jude's. You know, in a very short time, St. Jude's hurts my heart. It hurts my heart on a multitude of levels in that. And let's separate the politics from this thing. When you had the fire, the decision was made to build a new facility that would have replaced the existing services of the old facility. Under the Stevenson King administration, there was also the beginning of a discussion about building a new hospital for the South. And three locations were identified. By the Brewery, by the old St. Jude's facility, and then behind where the stadium, the stadium is, the George Adams Stadium. When we lost the election, the Stevenson King lost the election, the facility to replace St. Jude's was within months away of being operationalized. The then new government reviewed, which they're entitled to do, the existing situation, and made a decision to go ahead and build a new hospital in the existing location. In hindsight, I think that that was a bad decision. I think what they should have done is operationalized the old facility and allowed the people to move back from the stadium into the new facility, and even if they wanted to choose the same location, to have built it around that. But they didn't. As a consequence of that, and also as a consequence of not having all the money necessary to build this new facility, and not even having a design, and doing it on a piecemeal basis, we ended up with a situation in which after five years, that they had spent $130 million, as well as not completing the project. So when we came in, we were told the project was only going to be another three months, which was fine. Then we were told, well, no, it's going to take another six months, and they need another $70 million. So at that point now, you go and you do your own review. The review showed me that what they had built was inadequate, and that if we in fact attempted to complete the building, even to get it to a minimum standard, would require the demolition of certain aspects of the building, and a conservatively would have had to spend $100 million. So for me, I said, wow, and for cabinet, we said, okay, how much is it going to cost us to build a new facility? So a new facility, we believe we can build for $30 million, US dollars, just over $100 million EC dollars. The question is, do you try to fix up and amend a building that will never be of international standard, will at best be at minimum standard, or should we just build a proper world class facility? And so the decision was made, let's build the world class facility, we think we can do it cheaper, we can do it faster, and we're going to get a better quality facility. And then the question becomes, what do you do with the old building? So as many of the components of the old building that we can include in the new complex, we are, but we're also now out trying to get an investor to build a university, a medical university in that location. Why? We've seen the success of medical universities around the Caribbean, St. George's, Ross University, St. Vincent, Dominica, you go down the stream. But we are offering something that doesn't exist anywhere, which is that the university can have an operational hospital on the same campus as a teaching hospital. And we think that that's a significant added value that we can bring to the table. Also when you take into consideration the new international airport, the new office facilities, the possibility of a cruise ship terminal, the new hotel rooms coming in, our desire to make the south the fastest growing area, you might as well put in a proper hospital because you're going to have to at some point do that anyway. So the goal is that we're, we've broken ground, the money is there, the plans have been approved by DCA. We have a really fabulous team of experienced people. OECC, which is this Taiwanese international construction company that has experiences in building hospitals, will be overseeing the project and completing the project. And we're, we believe that we can have that project completed sometime next year. And so we're looking at with one year period to get it done. That's what our goal is. I mean so, I mean we, we, we will clearly know within by Christmas how far advanced we are and I will give a more accurate update, but certainly by next year the intention is to have the hospital completed and operationalized. What are we doing? What is your administration doing to make conditions more comfortable at the stadium? Well, one, the closure of the garbage dump. They had major sewage problem there. They had the roof problem. We've taken down the debris. And despite what everybody was saying, all the results showed there was very little fiberglass content in the roof, but that's all now down. Replacement of some of the air conditioners. The big one really is we've just put some new X-ray and MRI equipment in that location. And continue to say to the staff there how much we appreciate what they're doing and to make it as easy as possible. But there is no short-term solution to their problem that would ever be to a satisfactory level. We just got to continue to rely on the hard-working people that are there to work through this process and the patients of the people who are using it. Many of them who come from my constituency. It's a very sad situation, but I am comforted in knowing that the government has made resources available, made this an absolute priority, completely empathizes and in no way underestimates the crisis that we have. But we believe that by next year, bolstering Jews, OKEU, the work that we're doing on the primary services, we didn't get to speak about Souffreur, we didn't get to speak about Dennery, we didn't get to speak about the new polyclinic and facilities on the Shosei Road, improving and increasing the hours of the polyclinic in Grozallet, and all the added resources and equipment that we're putting into all those places, the combination of all those things and then the Kudegra being the health insurance, that we really believe that solutions now would have a healthcare system that we all can be proud of, but more importantly, that would be accessible to all Saint Lucians, all Saint Lucians. Thank you very much, Mr. Prime Minister, for being part of our program today in focus. Certainly we covered a number of areas really of serious importance to Saint Lucians. That's of the economy. We looked at crime and security and we finished off with health. We could not exhaust all of them based on the time that we've had, but we're quite happy that you've been able to get an overview of the government's plans and policies regarding those areas. This has been in focus. I'd like to also thank our co-host, Lisa Joseph, for being part of our program. Thank you once more, Mr. Prime Minister and to all the staff here at the Government Information Service and the National Television Network. I'm Ryan O'Brien. Join us next time when we go in focus.