The Elected Representative for Road South, Mr. Haydn Hughes, held his second town hall meeting at Blowing Point on Saturday evening, October 10.
“I have promised the constituents of Road South that I would come to them every quarter not only to report, but to hear their suggestions and concerns,” he explained. “That is in keeping with my promise and this is my second town hall meeting I have had since coming to the office.”
Mr. Hughes, who holds the portfolios for Infrastructure and Tourism, went on: “We discussed a wide range of issues but what took precedence was the reopening of Anguilla. A number of the constituents, who wanted Anguilla to close down in March, have now come to the reality that Covid -19 is actually going nowhere. As times become increasingly difficult, they have opened their appetite for reopening the island; but they want to ensure that we are moving forward to do so in a safe and responsible way.
“I have no doubt that the health team – the Chief Medical Officer and the Ministry of Health in conjunction with the Ministry of Tourism – will be doing the reopening in a most responsible manner.
“Just today, Tuesday, October 20, I did a presentation to the Caribbean Tourism Organisation that was carried on Facebook Live. I spoke to Johnson JohnRose [the CTO Barbadian Communications Specialist] and we discussed our reopening. He said we were very stringent in what we were doing and very late in terms of reopening. But people must appreciate that the reason why we are late is that we are trying to ensure that we cover all our basics.”
Mr. Hughes added: “There will be some areas that we will miss and, as those pop up, we will fill the gaps. We want to be very responsible in the way we reopen so as to protect everybody involved; and to make sure that people have the requisite training to ensure that the mistakes made by other destinations are not made by us.”