It is costing Government $5 million for the armour stones being used to reconstruct the breakwater at the Bridgetown Harbour.
That was confirmed recently as the Ministry of Tourism and International Transport asked for $7.5 million which Ryan Straughn, Minister in the Ministry of Finance and Economic Affairs, said was related to two specific areas associated with the passing of Hurricane Beryl.
“Last July, there was significant damage to the fishing harbour as well as the Bridgetown Port and the Coast Guard base. We all saw the videos of the Jolly Roger sinking and the Dream Chaser was the other one as well. So the specific piece of monies here with respect to the $5 million for the port was actually to pay for the armour stones which I’m sure Barbadians may have seen being offloaded.
“The works have commenced in respect to that. So this was the advance that was made to us after the coastal assessment was done with respect to the specification of those stones.
“We all recall seeing the breakwater at the Bridgetown Harbour and those stones were tossing as if they were jacks we used to play with when we were young. And each of those stones weighed five tonnes each and, therefore, it was important that even though the facility was built in the 1970s in relation to being able to withstand a Category 1 hurricane back then, we had a situation last year where we had a Category 3 storm 100 miles east of Barbados creating significant damage.
“The immediate repair is temporary and therefore we needed to make sure that we got this work started in order to give great certainty with respect to the industry moving forward in relation to the execution of those activities.”
The other area was related to civil aviation in terms of additional staffing and additional equipment, he told the House during continuing debate on the Estimates 2024-2025.
“To upgrade the civil aviation framework, I think we can all attest to the fact that air safety is critically important, given what we’ve seen in recent times internationally with respect to safety, and therefore as Barbados upgrades its systems and training of its people within the civil aviation space, these monies were appropriated to help support that endeavour.
“We’ve long spoken about Barbados becoming a Category 1 jurisdiction according to the Federal Aviation Authority, and therefore this Government has taken the concrete steps to be able to ensure that goal can be attained by being able to make the necessary investments to achieve such status which then allows us then to do more business within the North American space.”
