Dear Editor,
The Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Public Works Philip Davis has repeatedly promised residents of Abaco during the by-election campaign that the PLP's Urban Renewal 2.0 program is scheduled to be introduced on that island within days now. Urban Renewal, as it is understood all around the world, refers to programs of land redevelopment in areas of dense population where derelict and abandoned neighborhoods make living and working difficult and undesirable, and which further discourages private investment. Urban renewal inevitably results in the installation of improved access to public utilities (water, telecommunications, IT and sewerage), improved roads, and maintained parks and open green spaces as well as new mixed commercial and residential developments.
When such efforts take place outside of real urban centers, they are sometimes called "Village Renewal" initiatives. As implemented, the PLP's Urban Renewal 2.0 has been an exercise of knocking down privately owned derelict homes, collecting improperly disposed garbage and requiring police officers to perform social service duties including delivering groceries to residents in a number of over-the-hill neighborhoods in Nassau and in the poorer areas of Freeport. It has also involved land clearing in upscale neighborhoods around New Providence including along Eastern Road -- home to many PLP Parliamentarians and ranking party officials.
Fortunately for the PLP, the heavy lifting for effective urban renewal in New Providence was undertaken by the last FNM government through its much maligned and unappreciated New Providence Roads and Utilities Improvement Program. The FNM undertook similar infrastructural development in the Family Islands during each of its terms in office, making each island more investment and development ready. Abaco benefitted immensely from such enlightened infrastructural development and is today the most prosperous Family Island outside of the privately developed city of Freeport.
And so Abaco, home to just over 15,000 people, seems a strange place for the PLP to launch an Urban Renewal 2.0 program; certainly it would more properly be called Village Renewal. Of course what the DPM may be suggesting is that the PLP government is going to acquire the illegal shanty towns of The Mud and Pigeon Pea, install public utilities and construct decent homes for the illegal immigrants and squatters who live there.
If Mr. Davis is considering such action for Abaco someone had better quickly remind him that he, the minister responsible for Urban Renewal, is also the MP for Cat Island, an island littered with abandoned and derelict buildings, overgrown privately owned properties and large numbers of unemployed and under-employed residents. The DPM would do well to remember his neglected, abandoned and unloved constituents on Cat Island, many of whom would happily welcome a little bit of PLP Urban Renewal 2.0. - Charles Ferguson
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