North Abaco MP Renardo Curry said his first order of business as the constituency’s parliamentary secretary in the Office of the Prime Minister is to find a way to lure investment to the nation’s third island-city.
Mr. Curry was officially given his instruments of appointment during a brief ceremony at Government House yesterday.
After a vigorous campaign, Mr. Curry crushed his opponents in the October 15 North Abaco bye-election.
While speaking with reporters yesterday, he said his appointment is good for Abaco.
“A lot of investors are frustrated with having to travel back and forth to Nassau. There is just a lot of red tape in the way so this is just showing that the government is coming to the people. My appointment is going to be very special for the people there,” he said.
“Job creation is a major situation right now. A lot of our young people are looking for jobs. One of my personal beliefs is that the government cannot hire everybody because it is already overstaffed. So we have to find ways to create jobs. A lot of investors right now love the Abacos. If you look at how we are set up, we have a variety of cays there that are fully developed. We have some of the nicest beaches there so it is a very attractive place for investors. So we believe if we get some of these investors to come to our shores that alone can create a lot of jobs.”
He continued, “It doesn’t have to be only international investors. It can be domestic – people right here who may want to invest right in Abaco.”
Mr. Curry also spoke about the criticisms from the Free National Movement (FNM) that said Mr. Curry’s appointment “negates the role of local government.”
“When the former administration put an Office of The Prime Minister in Abaco, why you think they did that? There was a former prime minister who was also thinking how fast the economy was growing and we needed somebody there to have an office there to be able to facilitate growth and putting me there as a parliamentary secretary is a very good move,” he said.
Prime Minister Perry Christie, who also spoke to reporters, said that he felt confident in his decision.
He added that local government is not strong enough.
“If I thought local government at this stage in our history was able to provide what I was talking about as far as the Government of The Bahamas is concerned then I wouldn’t have a problem… We still have not reached that point where we have evolved the level of authority to local government,” Prime Minister Christie said.
The nation’s chief also disagrees that he has a “Gussie Mae” cabinet as the Opposition suggests.
The Christie cabinet consists of 21 ministers.
“Bear in mind that I appointed just one more than Hubert Ingraham. But I now know this – as a result of having that cabinet meeting in Abaco and our having to focus on the needs of islands, I have come to realise that no matter what the noise in the market is that the country needs to be governed and that we will be judged by results not by how we respond to political talk. We are going to be judged by what we do,” he said.
“We are much closer to having something accomplished by having someone like Renardo Curry on the ground down there to say ‘we have not done certain things and we have to do certain things down there.’ I’m saying when we assess the cost differences in paying him a parliamentary secretary’s salary and setting up an office down there with the results we are going to get with him being down there as a part of my ministry it will pale in significance. So I expect to have real results in Abaco. I expect the people to feel my government and quite frankly it would have been hell to pay if I had left Abaco unrepresented at the level of the government.”
