BASSETERRE, St. Kitts – IN light of the dissemination of inaccurate information concerning the Kittitian Hill cottage development project, a call has been made for the Minister of Tourism, the Hon. Richard ‘Ricky’ Skerritt, to resign from that position.
Active member of Operation Rescue Richard Caines recently made the call, claiming that the inaccurate information is a result of gross negligence by the Minister of Tourism, under whose purview the Kittitian Hill project falls.
Weeks ago, the Communication’s Unit of the Office of the Prime Minister (CUOPM) issued a press release which suggested that 40 one-bedroom cottages were completed at the Kittitian Hill development project.
Following an article published by this media house labelling that release as “untrue”, CUPOM published a further release which contained an apology for the erroneous information. That release also indicated that the first release was crafted from information disseminated from Adams Unlimited, a public relations company in New York, USA.
According to Caines, he has difficulty understanding how such a mistake could have been made. He described it as another example of a government which “has outlived its usefulness”.
“I am saddened at what our country has come to. It is one crisis after another…My reason for saying it is, ‘How can the government’s Press Secretary publish information that was given to them from an outside source about the country in which he is living? Something is basically wrong with that. It is fraught with problems.”
Minister in the former People’s Action Movement (PAM) Administration, Caines averred that the propagation of inaccurate information “is an embarrassment to our country and somebody must step up to the plate…Somebody is responsible…
“It means…the government is not in control of the country. I will take you a step further. I will say that in normal government circles, the Minister of Tourism should resign from government because that comes under his office. I am calling for the Tourism Minister’s resignation…And if that doesn’t happen, then the Prime Minister should fire him. But as I said before, the government has outlived its usefulness and we are into one crisis after another. In other words, nothing will happen and that when they give you the information and it is wrong, when everybody is satisfied that the information is wrong they simply sit back and say ‘well, what could we do?’”
Caines suggested that, in relation to the Adams Unlimited, disciplinary action should be taken. However, since the information which the firm used in its release came from St. Kitts, someone must be held accountable.
“We had a situation in Britain the other day where a Minister used his wife to do something and, when it came to light, it was a traffic offence…and the minister resigned because of integrity in public life. And therefore we cannot have a situation where we have the government not wanting to come to anybody.”
Caines said the Federation has been facing “one crisis after another…Each month is something new. I don’t know what is going to be next month. Do you think we are going to escape it? Next month will be something else and that is the unfortunate situation that we find ourselves in.”
In light thereof, Caines suggested that “it is for people to get up off their tails, speak out loudly enough and Church Street will hear them. They can speak in many ways.”
