Finance Minister warns ‘pests and parasites’ in the Grenadines 

Minister of Finance Camillo Gonsalves says that Hurricane Beryl has revealed the true friends of the Grenadines. 

The category 4 storm ravaged the Southern Grenadines on July 1, 2024, destroying or damaging 90% of the buildings.

“There are some people who have called themselves investors in our fair Grenadines, who have invested a lot of mouth but not a lot of action when the people needed them most,” Gonsalves said at an event in Canouan to mark the first anniversary of the cyclone.

“There have been a lot of mosquitoes that have sucked a lot of blood but have not given anything back when the time came. And we remember those as well, and we remember how we deal with all pests and parasites in the region,” he said.

Two-thirds of Canouan are under the control of private investors under a lease agreement signed by the former New Democratic Party (NDP) administration.

When he was in opposition, Prime Minister Ralph Gonsalves had complained about the NDP government leasing much of the island to investors.

However, his Unity Labour Party (ULP) administration put even more lands in their charge after coming to office in March 2001.

Since then, Gonsalves has spoken about his government’s dissatisfaction with the situation in Canouan and the lack of revenue the island has been generating for the government.  

In February 2024, for the second time in just five months, Gonsalves complained that his government was not receiving much revenue from the private investment in the north of Canouan.

The complaint — four months before Hurricane Beryl struck — came even as the government had to spend US$40 million to rehabilitate the Canouan Jetport on which it had spent EC$20 million 17 years earlier. 

Then, following the cyclone, tensions between the government and the investors came to a head when Governor General Dame Susan Dougan issued an exclusion order for Batu Erem, Canouan Group CEO and Vice-President of the St. Vincent and the Grenadines Hotel Association (SVGHTA).

The order was issued after an interaction on July 4, 2024, between Erem, who is said to have been born in Turkey, and Gonsalves in Canouan. 

The order came despite a letter on July 5, 2024, from Erem to Gonsalves and the SVGHTA in which Erem expressed “regret” over the tone of an interaction between him and Gonsalves one day earlier.

He said he had not intended for his meeting with Gonsalves, four days after the devastation wrought by Hurricane Beryl, “to be marked by a confrontational tone”.

In his address at the commemoration, the finance minister said over 3,000 people were displaced from the Southern Grenadines and 90% of all the buildings were damaged or destroyed. 

“Even today, 1,557 people from the Southern Grenadines are receiving monthly income support. Even today, almost 700 people from the Southern Grenadines are still living in rented apartments on the mainland.”

Gonsalves said the work that was to be done after the hurricane seemed almost impossible.

“We had to put all the poles back up. We had to restore electricity. We had to deliver water. We had to remove debris from the streets and find something to do with all of that debris. 

“We had to take care of people who lost their jobs, who lost their livelihoods. We had to comfort people who were traumatised by the hurricane, … more than anything, … we had to pull together as a people, and we had to find solutions to the problems that we were facing.”

He said this is when the ingenuity, creativity and the resilience of the people of Canouan came to the fore.

“Everywhere there was a challenge, somebody saw an opportunity; everywhere that there was destruction, somebody saw an opportunity to rebuild; everywhere that there was hopelessness, somebody saw hope,” Gonsalves said.

He said the government and people reached out to “the kind benefactors who have come from far away. 

“Everyone worked together to imagine a resilient Canouan and to work together to achieve it. I think today, even as we remember those who died, today, is still a day of celebration, because we have proven in Canouan and we’ve proven in the southern Grenadines that there is nothing that we cannot do as long as we work together.”

He said the rebuilding, including the government, residents, investors and benefactors doing their part.

“And we have today elements in Canouan that look more beautiful than they looked before the hurricane passed,” he said at the event during which the government opened a new ferry terminal.

A new jetty has also been completed in Canouan, where a temporary wharf had been used for years, even as the permanent one had been in disrepair.

“We’re standing in an area that didn’t exist before, and we’re standing in an area that is a look forward and also a look to the past,” the finance minister said.

“It’s made of the history of Beryl. It’s made of the debris of Beryl, and it shows that Beryl could not break the spirit of the people of Canaan.”

He said the government has spent over EC$12 million in income support in the Southern Grenadines.

“We have spent on the restoration of electricity over $20 million, we have spent on free shuttle service to the Grenadines over $5 million; we have spent money to restore schools, to rebuild houses, to purchase materials, and all that we have spent has not been enough, but it has been as much as we could spend in our limited circumstances.”

The finance minister said the government was grateful, therefore, “to other benefactors who came to the fore and raised their hand and said, ‘I, too, will help in the reconstruction of Canaan.’”

He recognised especially Ian Wace, a British hedge fund manager who said at the ceremony that the prime minister had “extracted’ five times the money that he had planned to spend.

The finance minister praised Wave “for the magnificent work that he has done. 

“And a lot of what we have here would not have been possible were it not for him, and he is a hero of this recovery as well, and we give him gratitude. 

“The work to recover is not yet complete,” Gonsalves said, however.

“We haven’t finished all that we have to do, but if we’re fair and honest, we’ve done a tremendous amount of work in the last year, a lot of people who woke up on the second of July would not have been able to imagine that Canouan would look like this a year later. And it is testimony, again, to all of that work,” the finance minister said.