Member of Parliament for St. Michael West Central, James Paul, is saying that there is a need for the law courts to have greater flexibility in dealing with the issue of unoccupied houses.
Paul explained that in his constituency, there are houses that have been left locked up and unoccupied for many years to the point where they are now in a state of disrepair and Government cannot remove them because of legal circumstances.
“I am saying that at a time in this country when we should be seeking for innovative solutions towards the issues that we face and not just going out there to march for marching sake, that we should be applying our minds towards coming up with solutions.
“It is not that the solutions are not there, because we can actually find ways to accelerate the court system to allow Government to deal with issues of these houses that are standing there unoccupied and getting dilapidated; deal with them because they pose a great danger to residents in these urban areas. I have situations where once those houses are there they are infested by vermin, they get overgrown with grass, nobody looks back; it is something that we need to address,” he said.
Paul spoke about the issue of unoccupied houses in the House of Assembly, on Tuesday, during a Resolution for the acquisition of Brighton Plantation Limited, St. George, where he stated that while Government was finding it difficult to provide adequate housing facilities, misleading Barbadians that “governments could continue to give a rental on a unit at a BDS$100 a week, is just not practical in today’s world”.
“It is just not practical and I know that any representative who gets up in any Parliament and says that and tries to convince their constituents that it is possible, they are just telling lies. They are just trying to mislead the very people that they are representing and giving them false hope too at the same time. I do agree that we have reached a stage in this country where politicians have got to stop misleading Barbadians as to what is possible in the context of what this country can actually give,” he said.
Paul, who is also Chief Executive Officer of the Barbados Agricultural Society (BAS), also argued that the country cannot continue to take up good agriculture land for housing projects, when there are urban areas that can be used to accommodate Barbadians.
“We need to make our urban areas more attractive to the residents that live there. We must not feel that our urban environments must be reduced to a state of decay. We have to pay attention sometimes to the reasons why people are moving out of our urban areas, as is happening in other countries,” he said. (AH)