MP for North Leeward Kishore Shallow has told residents that the Roseau sand and aggregate harvesting project is a “golden opportunity” to correct what he described as decades of neglect in roads, bridges and jobs.
Speaking at a “North Leeward Matters” town hall in Golden Grove on Tuesday, Shallow linked the proposed Roseau River operation to long-standing complaints about the constituency’s infrastructure and the high cost of construction materials on the Leeward coast.
“We have seen — and I’m speaking frankly — we have seen the neglect,” Shallow said at the start of the meeting.
“Whether it is in opportunities in agriculture, entrepreneurial opportunities, our employment opportunities, we have been shortchanged significantly.”
He singled out feeder roads and bridges as emblematic of that neglect.
“When you look at the roads in North Leeward … we have complaints all the time. ‘The feeder roads wahn fix… they need fixing.’ The bridge right down here in Fitz Hughes, that’s been like that for years. This one that we’re just completing here now, that’s been like that for years,” he said.
‘No excuse now’: materials on Leeward, not from Rabacca
Shallow argued that one of the main bottlenecks in North Leeward’s development has been the cost and difficulty of hauling aggregates from Rabacca in northeastern St. Vincent and other distant sources.
With Roseau, he said, that excuse should disappear, adding, “A main concern has been the additional expense and difficulty bringing materials to this side of the island…
“So imagine being provided with the opportunity of having the materials here in North Leeward… you reduce the cost significantly of developments, infrastructural developments.”
He said BRAGSA CEO Kem Bartholomew has committed that North Leeward will not merely host the project but “be at the forefront of these developments”.
“BRAGSA has made [a promise], saying that now North Leeward would be in a position to capitalise and be at the forefront of these developments, because we have no excuse now. The material is in here,” Shallow said at the meeting, which Bartholomew also attended.
Calling the deposits “a blessing, a gold mine”, he framed the project as part of a wider push to generate revenue and employment locally.
‘Tell us what we’re going to get this year’
Shallow said he pressed BRAGSA for concrete, time-bound commitments to North Leeward, rather than vague promises of future benefits.
“So what I asked Kem, as your representative… ‘So what is in this for the people of North Leeward? How are we going to be guaranteed to benefit from this thing? And … don’t promise us five years down the road, or 10 years down the road. Tell us what we’re going to get by the end of this year, and next year, and so on’,” Shallow said.
Shallow said he specifically mentioned bus stops in Petit Bordel, Rose Bank and Rose Hall; completion of feeder roads that have “taken five-plus years”; and construction of the Fitz Hughes bridge “within a short order”.
Jobs and training for locals
Beyond infrastructure, Shallow said he has insisted that employment from the project must prioritise residents of North Leeward.
“Kem has said to me that they don’t want to have to bring people down here every day… They want people in the area, so there’s going to be a training process where we train persons who want to be operators of machines… and we create employment for people in North Leeward.”
He signalled that the government expects locals to step forward.
‘This is not another quarry project’
Against a backdrop of anger over the Rayneau quarry in Richmond, Shallow repeatedly sought to draw a clear line between that controversial venture and the Roseau proposal.
“What we have done in a very responsible way is engage the experts in the environment… so this is not like the quarry project,” he said.
In January 2022, farmers in Richmond were alarmed by tractors moving through their crops.
It later became public that the then Unity Labour Party administration had leased 59 acres of state-owned agricultural land to St. Lucian businessman Rayneau Gajhadar for 30 years to operate a stone quarry.
“We wanted to ensure that this is not another quarry project in North Leeward that would certainly interfere with further development, because that is what the quarry is doing now. It is interfering with our development,” said Shallow, who came to office last November in the landslide 14-1 victory by the New Democratic Party over the ULP.
He said the World Bank had rejected a proposed recreational development in Richmond because of environmental concerns related to the quarry.
“So we understand the importance of doing our assessment, our environmental assessment,” he added.
Quarry contract ‘will be reviewed’
Shallow went further than distancing Roseau from Richmond, promising a legal and environmental review of the quarry operation itself.
“We are going to address the issue of the quarry because we are not comfortable with it as well,” he said.
“One, we have to review the contract, so we’re going to get the Attorney General in due course to review that contract, and then… where there are clauses that permit for us to act, we act, and we have to get an environmental assessment done for that as well.”
North Leeward vs national interest
Shallow also urged the constituency to see the Roseau project as both a local remedy and a national economic initiative, stressing that the revenue will flow through BRAGSA into the wider economy.
“We have to think beyond local and constituency level, we have to think nationally as well,” he said.
“What this project is affording us to do is generate significant revenue for BRAGSA and by extension the country, stimulating the economy.”
He said even before operations started, BRAGSA had secured contracts with buyers in Canouan, Bequia and elsewhere in the Grenadines, positioning the Leeward coast to export materials that would otherwise be lost to the sea.
He emphasised that the Roseau River coast itself would not be altered:
‘Nothing to hide’: Shallow touts openness
Shallow framed the Chateaubelair meeting – where detailed figures from the Canouan contract and the projected value of the deposits were disclosed – as part of a new culture of transparency in state projects.