Plans are in hand to demolish a substantial portion of the Secretariat Building which once served as offices for the Chief Minister, the Minister of Home Affairs and clerical staff – a casualty of Hurricane Irma. The roof was ripped off, leaving the structure unsound and abandoned.
Minister of Infrastructure, Mr. Curtis Richardson, made the disclosure while speaking as a guest at the Government’s talk show programme on Radio Anguilla on Tuesday night, April 10. He was at the time being interviewed by Mr. Mark Romney, producer of the programme.
“The roof of that building came off during the hurricane and we have just decided that it may be best to demolish it and take it away,” Mr. Richardson stated. “That is the portion that runs from north to south. The new portion that runs from east to west will remain, but, as I said, the decision is to take down that little portion which is very weak and broken and does not serve any useful purpose going forward.”
The Minister continued: “I have done some construction and I know what a building should look like if you are going to do some repairs as opposed to tearing it down. I had made a decision on some buildings but people felt otherwise. Those buildings are still there. But everybody is coming to the realisation that, indeed, those buildings have to be torn down. Even the British engineers who came in said they have to be torn down.
“Speaking about the infrastructural needs of Anguilla, everyone knows that after Hurricane Irma we had some considerations as to whether we should just put back the roofs and windows on some buildings, or whether we should do some demolitions and clean-ups. The decision was made to do that in certain areas – and in other areas we had to put back roofs. However, it provided an opportunity in Government to push ahead with the thoughts and ideas that members of the public and others have been talking about, for a long time, but which were not going anywhere.
“One of the ideas was to have a central administrative building to house a lot of Government offices rather than having people coming to The Valley to run around trying to find the Departments of Immigration, Inland Revenue and Labour…I think that in the coming months a lot of people will be pleased to know that there is a plan to move Inland Revenue to the old NBA building. Labour is already operating there and Immigration should be there as well, by the end of the year, and this will save the public a lot of time and frustration.”
Minister Richardson further stated: “We will continue in that vein to have more Government offices centralised…We are also looking to merge, as a unit, the Departments of Fisheries, Agriculture and Environment. That plan for that merger, as it goes ahead, is also to expand the Agricultural Building so that we can accommodate all three units. Right now, persons there are in cramped spaces and, as the Minister responsible, I went on a tour there on Monday and I would like to thank them for enduring the inconvenience and frustration. They told me they wanted to repaint most of the walls upstairs, and I promised them that, even though things were tight, I would approach the Permanent Secretary and Ministers of Government for their support.”
Mr. Richardson also spoke about an idea, following the impact of Hurricane Irma, to put all five units of the Albena Lake-Hodge Comprehensive School into one area. “There has been a discussion that perhaps the time has come to put all five buildings and resources in one common area,” he disclosed. “They [Government and Education officials] are looking at the figures to see if it has value for money and makes sense.”
Minister Richardson said he was looking forward to the soon approval of the 2018 Budget by the UK Government, and the release of the 60 million pounds (EC$250 million) humanitarian aid to Anguilla.
