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An accompanying picture with Hensley Daniel responding to a question from the audience is attached. |
The Nevis Reformation Party (NRP) held its first in a series of town hall meetings at Market Street, Cotton Ground on Thursday October 6 2005. This is the first in a series of public town hall meetings to be held every Thursday night at 8:00 in the five different constituencies around Nevis. The purpose of these meetings according to the Party Leader is two fold; for the members of the NRP to outline their proposed plans and policies for governance and to listen to the public concerns and get a feel from them as to how they want their country to be governed. Mr. Parry said the town hall meetings were particularly important as politicians are supposed to be servants of the people and not the other way around so the involvement of the people in the various constituencies on the island was important.
The Town Hall Meeting started at approximately 8:05 p.m. and the candidate for the area Mr. Joseph Walcott Parry was the feature speaker. He spoke of government addressing the declining performances of male students with regards to education. He also spoke of addressing the needs of St Thomas' parish when the NRP is elected citing that the people of Nevis have long been neglected by the present administration despite the fact that St Thomas' parish through tourism generates the most money for Nevis. Mr. Parry went on to make clear that he was not against any hotel having access to the beach but stressed that locals too must be able to have equal access to all beaches as none is to be made private. He commented that there needs to be more thrust at keeping our villages clean and said he would organize one for St Thomas' to ensure that St Thomas' is always looking pristinely beautiful.
Deputy Leader Hensley Daniel also spoke and stressed on the theme of education. He emphasized that upon NRP's election to government its first, second and third priority would be education and if that does not work out the alternative would still be education. He commented that he saw the development of the people of this country as the most important thing and went on to say that he had no problem if the country was in debt because of the government's investment in people and their pursuit of further knowledge. He emphasized that if one is educated and or trained that they would be able to survive even when the CSME came along. NRP's plan he stated was to give free textbooks to all students in primary and high school, provide scholarships to ensure that more teachers are trained, give teachers their full salary even when they are in Teacher's Training College and provide scholarships to the poor among us to ensure they got a University Education. He also went on to make the point that we need to do more to revive our culture when it comes to the performing arts and that he felt that after 30 years of Culturama that we were to be further along with regards to how the festival is organized and that there should be more local personnel involved instead of having to bring in people from overseas all the time for technical assistance.
