KINGSTOWN, St. Vincent – Vincentian public servants will not receive a 10 per cent salary cut, Prime Minister and Minister of Finance Dr. Ralph Gonsalves said on Sunday.
Gonsalves,speaking at the ground-breaking ceremony for the construction of the Argyle International Airport terminal building, said such information was “a total lie”
He announced several projects to be undertaking soon and said that two medical schools — All Saints and the American University of St. Vincent and the Grenadines — would soon begin operating in the country.
On Aug. 12, his government and the Amajaro will sign a memorandum of understanding “to signal the start of the Cocoa Project in St. Vincent and the Grenadines”.
He said four projects, amounting to EC$150 million over the next three years, would also begin this year.
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These are a World Bank emergency recovery loan project of EC$13.5 million; and EC$32.4 million loan project from the Caribbean Development Bank for the Tomas and for the April disasters; an EC$43 million grant for Ministry of Health; and, an EC$56.6 million grant from the World Bank for a climate change pilot project.
Gonsalves further announced that an additional 5,000 laptops would arrive from Venezuela on August 16 as part of his administration’s One Laptop Per Student initiative.
These computers will be for students entering Form 1 in September.
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He said there is a poultry project with the East Caribbean Group of Companies (ECGC), “which looks very promising”.
“We are working very hard to see if we can get one of those poultry project,” he said.
Gonsalves also announced that his government last week approved EC$2 million for road works.
“I want to time it in a way so that you can get your money by the end of August so that you can help to send your children out to school as part of the education revolution,” he said.
(I Witness-News apologises for the quality of the audio in this post)