Premier Amory hands over the cheque to Minister Brandy as Ambassador Liau looks on.

The Basseterre-based Taiwanese Ambassador to the Federation of St. Kitts and Nevis Her Excellency Madam Marietta Liau on Tuesday at a function held at Administration Building’s Conference Room in Charlestown handed to the Hon Premier Mr Vance Amory a cheque of EC$174,982.00.

According to Premier Amory, the Hardtimes Corn Mill Project had been identified as a useful project and the money would be used to rehabilitate, by doing some repairs, the old corn mill which had to be closed some years ago, and do some restoration of the equipment, which is still there.

He emphasised that the money would not be used for the restructuring of the corn mill as an enterprise, but rather to have the reconstruction of the corn mill for persons to see what the heritage of Nevis has been over the years.

“The second part of the project is to use the facility to provide opportunities for training and as a tourist attraction and the reason for that is to allow young people in the area to participate in programmes organised by the Ministry of Youth and Community Affairs,” commented the Premier.

Among the training programmes would be the making of batik, upholstery and craft production, and also to provide opportunity for the young people in the Gingerland area and Nevis as a whole to become employable and to give them a chance to provide economic activity for themselves.

“I want to thank Your Excellency for responding to our request to finance this project and to say how pleased I am that your government has continued to be supportive of the Nevis Island Administration in this area,” Premier Amory told the Ambassador, who was accompanied by the First Secretary at the embassy, Mr Winston Chung.

Ambassador Liau said that her government was aware that the project is important to the Nevis government, saying that its renovation would create jobs to the people in Nevis and would also benefit the economy of St. Kitts and Nevis.

“My government is very happy to have this opportunity to work together with you and to support this project,” observed the Ambassador. “Certainly we want to wish the people here and in the entire Federation, all the best and we hope this project will be very successful.”

Upon receiving the cheque, Premier Amory handed it over to Junior Minister in the Ministry of Trade and Industry, Youth, Sports and Community Affairs, Hon Mr Laughton Brandy, as the project will be implemented and managed by his ministry. 

With Mr Brandy at the function were Principal Assistant Secretary in the Ministry, Mr Brian David, the Director of Youth and Sports, Mr Jefferson Wallace, Small Enterprise Development Officer, Ms Jacqueline Brookes, Skills Training Officer, Ms Marie Mason and Community Affairs Officer, Mr Michael Herbert.

Minister Laughton Brandy in giving the vote of thanks said that the money given would have a multiplying effect to the tune of millions of dollars, saying that whenever the government invests in the training of the young people the multiplying effect would be tremendous.

“We want to use these funds to the best of our ability for the training of our young people and we have various programmes to be executed in that centre as we have in other centres around the island and we want to ask you to come back in the near future to see the implementation of the programmes,” remarked the Junior Minister who ended by saying: “We look forward to the continued relationship with my government and your government.”