Southern Grenadines MP Terrance Ollivierre has expressed concern about the state of housing and emergency shelters in the constituency as another hurricane season approaches, less than a year after the devastation caused by Hurricane Beryl.
“I know I raised the issue a couple weeks ago, and I’m doing it again,” Ollivierre, an opposition MP, said on his New Democratic Party’s (NDP) show on NICE Radio.
He noted that some people from the Southern Grenadines have been living in St. Vincent for almost a year, following the category 4 cyclone on July 1.
“… first and foremost, these people are longing to go home,” Ollivierre said, adding that some of the people don’t have any houses to go to.
“Some of them don’t have any lands on which to rebuild because they were renting,” Ollivierre, noting that he had recently published images of houses in Union Island that were yet to be repaired.
“… some people told me that comments were being made that those houses were already fixed and all of that,” Ollivierre said.
“And I wish to assure the people of St. Vincent and the Grenadines, other islands, apart from Union, if you go to Union Island, check the video, check the pictures, you would see those are houses in Union Island that have not been fixed,” he said, referring to a video published on the NDP’s social media pages.
He said some houses have to be demolished and rebuilt because of the damage caused by Hurricane Beryl.
The MP said constituents who attended government consultations in Kingstown and Union Island said they were told “that they need to get lands or ask members of their families who have lands on which the government can build houses for them.
“I took pains to point out that in about two weeks or so after Beryl, we had the supplementary estimates, the bill, that made provision for $2.5 million to purchase lands for people who were displaced by Beryl,” Ollivierre said.
On April 28, Minister of Finance Camillo Gonsalves told Parliament that while EC$2.5 million was budgeted for the purchase of land, mainly in the Grenadines, in the aftermath of Hurricane Beryl, at this initial stage of the rehabilitation, no significant land purchase was required.
Ollivierre, however, noted that when houses were destroyed by natural hazards in other parts of the country, the government bought lands, built houses and gave them to the victims.
He said that some months ago, the government had tried to acquire land from citizens to give to developers.
“Why is it that they can’t acquire lands in Union Island to build houses for people who are praying and who are longing to go home?” Ollivierre said, noting the hurricane receiver package that Parliament approved was for EC$136 million.
Ollivierre, who lives in Union Island, had telephoned the show from Canouan, another southern Grenadine island.
“… some people were asking me this morning, … ‘Where the money is?’ ‘Where have it gone?’ ‘Where was it spent?’ ‘Do we have a breakdown of where the money gone?’ … ‘Why are there so many people suffering in this island in terms of finding suitable accommodation?’”
Businesses struggling to reopen
Ollivierre said that businesses are also struggling to recommence operations, even as this is important to restarting the Union Island economy.
“Why is it that help hasn’t gone to these people in order to get their business community up and running again so that they provide the activity on the island that is needed to strengthen and rebuild, to provide employment and other things that are needed for the island to start to rebound as quickly as possible?”
Ollivierre pointed out that with economic activities and people relocating to Union Island, it would help with the recovery from the storm.”
Ollivierre noted that the hurricane season, which runs from Sunday (June 1) to Nov. 30 was just a few days away.
On May 22, the Barbados-based Caribbean Institute for Meteorology and Hydrology (CIHM) forecast a “potentially intense but erratic” 2025 Atlantic hurricane season.
Climatologist Cédric Van Meerbeeck says CIHM has 70% confidence in its forecast that there will be 19 named storms, with nine becoming hurricanes and four of them major hurricanes.
Ollivierre said that while Canouan is “a little better off”, most of the Hurricane shelters in Union Island “are no more; they have been destroyed.
“… do we have alternative accommodation in case you hear again very early in the hurricane season that something is coming our way? What is it have been put in place? What are they saying to people in terms of these accommodations?
“Have you looked, as I said, at alternative areas, alternative accommodation that can be used?” he said, adding, “in some cases, the hurricane shelters have been completely demolished. In some places, you have to throw it down.” He said that sometimes at the first sign of rain, residents of the island get “very antsy; they get nervous.
“… we are not asking for one (a hurricane), but in case you hear anything come, what are people in the islands, especially if it’s heading to the islands, what are they supposed to do?
“And likewise on mainland St. Vincent, the hurricane shelters also on the mainland, have they been checked? Have they tried to make sure that they are in good condition to withstand whatever category of hurricane comes or may come our way?
“So, these are questions we have been asking, and I really hope that within the Southern Grenadines, efforts are being made to … provide people with their homes in order to get them and their families back together.”
He said some of the owners of the homes in St. Vincent, where displaced Southern Grenadines residents are being housed, have told them that the contracts expire in June and July.