The Minister of Home Affairs and Education, Mrs. Cora Richardson-Hodge, has outlined some of the major accomplishments by the Anguilla United Front Government over the past four years.
She was at the time chairing the first of a series of public meetings held outside the Landsome Bowl Cultural Centre, on Saturday night, March 30, as part of activities marking the Government’s fourth anniversary in office since the general election on April 22, 2015. She noted that other speakers before her had mentioned a number of accomplishments but she went into more detail saying “it doesn’t hurt to reinforce the point.”
The list she outlined, including her personal comments, was as follows:
• The very first issue, and the most difficult issue, we had to deal with as an administration, was the banking resolution; but today we have the evidence of the National Commercial Bank of Anguilla in existence and catering to the people of Anguilla.
• The 60 million pounds that was given as a grant to Anguilla, after Hurricane Irma, was obtained through negotiations by the members of this Government, under the leadership of the Honourable Chief Minister.
• This Government facilitated the resolution of Cap Juluca…After many years of conflict we now have a united property that has been able to be opened and successful since its re-launch.
• The three fire trucks that were mentioned by the Honourable Minister of Infrastructure. I want to take some time and emphasize this because I have heard, and have seen, criticisms about why the Government needs three fire trucks. But there is a safety and security issue for which the Government and the people of Anguilla required these fire trucks. In relation to the fire trucks, they have to be able to handle any emergency and make it to the end of the runway within two minutes. Previously, used fire trucks were unreliable and with no fire truck the airport would have to close down. Some jets require a certain amount of fire trucks and firemen. For instance, some jets require category 6 and a category 6 [airport] requires two fire trucks. The third fire truck is a domestic truck and that is on its way… A new engine is being installed in one of the older trucks which will be a back-up to the two new appliances…So it is two fire trucks at the airport and one domestic truck.
The money being used to import three new fire trucks is not wasted funds. They are necessary: (1) to keep the airport open and (2) to be able to allow Anguilla to receive these beautiful jets we love to see – because they feed into our hotel sector where the majority of Anguillians are working.
• The Combined Fire and Air Traffic Services Building is a new building, and the airport has a GPS approach where the pilot punches in a GPS device on the aircraft and pulls up Anguilla’s route, using satellite. This again is all new and started in September 2018.
• As for the accomplishments in my Ministry – the Ministry of Immigration, Labour, Education, Home Affairs: One of the first things that we did, coming out of Hurricane Irma, was the temporary Unemployment Benefit Programme. This was started when the Labour Department identified that we had a possible 2,000 people that were going to be unemployed directly as a result of the hurricane. The Labour Department and the Ministry of Labour consulted and collaborated with the Social Security Board to provide the Unemployment Benefit Programme for persons. So from December [2017] to April 2018 the people of Anguilla had something in their hand to tide them over until the hotel sector, and other businesses, were able to open again. This was a necessity and it was beneficial for the people of Anguilla.
• We also had the new Labour Relations Act which was put in place on January 23, 2019. Fellow Anguillians, we know that the previous Fair Labour Standards Act had worked for a time, but it was a 1980 piece of legislation, and it had outlived its usefulness. The labour market, which we are faced with today, is different from the labour market that we had in the 1980s, 1990s and even in the early 2000s. And so, we had to implement a new Labour Relations Act that would cater to the labour market in these times; and we know that the Labour Code is not something new that was discussed.
• We have had different administrations, over the years, having discussions about a new Labour Code and each time it was set aside. Why? Because it was a difficult issue. Sometimes you have to deal with a difficult issue and push on that issue irrespective of the outcome as long as it is right, good and proper for the people of Anguilla.
The new Labour Relations Act includes severance pay for the first time ever in Anguilla’s history where, if a person is made redundant, that person receives compensation for years of service given to a business. It also includes paternity leave for our men because we recognize that it is important for our men to be with their newborn children in addition to their mothers.
But, more importantly, it also recognizes the one-year contract that our people have been subjected to over the last couple of years. What the new Labour Relations Act says is that if you are on a one-year contract in a business, if you are a belonger of Anguilla, you completed that year and you are hired for the next year, at that point you become a permanent employee. That has direct implication for being able to go to the bank and get a loan; to get financing for our children to go off to school and to be able to leverage our assets because, at the end of the day, when you take a one-year contract to a financing institution, there is no guarantee that you will have that contract renewed at the end of the year because you are not a permanent employee. For the first time, our new Labour Relations Act recognizes the concept of permanent employees and it also does away effectively with one-year contracts, once you have surpassed that year. And that is good and right for the people of Anguilla.
• With regard to Constitutional and Electoral Reform, different administrations have talked about constitutional reform and, for whatever reason, it has always been put on the back burner…This Constitutional and Electoral Reform now puts in place, for the first phase, the Draft Order in Council which recognizes grandchildren, born outside of Anguilla, as belongers of Anguilla. It also allows for the title of the Chief Minister to be changed to Premier, simply to bring it in line with what pertains in other countries.
More importantly, it brings into effect at large voting. This had been talked about time and again. But finally we will be able to have island-wide representation. What that means, fellow Anguillians, is that you will have persons in the House of Assembly elected by the electorate as a whole and able to make representations on behalf of the people of Anguilla. It creates greater democracy in our process.
• I also want to mention that we, under my leadership, have made important changes to our immigration policy even before the constitutional changes were underway. One of those changes is that children born in Anguilla to non-belonger parents have had to pay for time. So children who have known no other country would have been born in Anguilla; gone to school in Anguilla; spent all their years in Anguilla; and the parents paid for time every year for the schooling of those children. But, in 2017, we made effective changes to the immigration policy to do away with the requirement of parents having to pay for time. The reason for that is that when those children reach the age of 9, they are able to obtain recognition as naturalized citizens and therefore would no longer pay for time…That policy also included the fact that grandchildren of Anguillians [born outside Anguilla] will not have to pay for time either…The immigration policy that we put into effect in 2017 was intended to balance the board in that respect as well.
The Minister said there were also many things in progress that would be delivered to the people of Anguilla over the next year or two. She explained that among them were the rebuilding of Government buildings such as the Ministry of Infrastructure and Communications, the House of Assembly; The Valley Health Clinic; the South Hill Clinic; the Primary Schools; and the re-located Albena Lake-Hodge Comprehensive School on 17 acres of land with a 400-metre track. She noted that the Minister of Infrastructure was working to ensure that there was consistent supply of water throughout Anguilla; phases 2 and 3 of the Labour Code will come into effect by the end of 2019; the Draft Order in Council [for sections of the constitution] should be approved by mid-April 2019; and by the end of the year the larger constitutional reform will take place.
