Falklands : Legislative Assembly Motion for Adjournment Speeches: The Hon Miss Emma Edwards
Submitted by Falkland Islands News Network (Juanita Brock) 19.07.2011 (Article Archived on 02.08.2011)
Mr Speaker, Honourable members, in rising to support the Motion I would like to address the House very briefly. Firstly I would like to welcome Brigadier Bill Aldridge. I hope you enjoy your stay here in the Islands. Do get out and take all those Penguin photographs. I am sure you will have an absolutely great time.
LEGISLATIVE ASSEMBLY 14 JULY 2011
(Part 2: Motion for Adjournment Speeches)
Compiled by J. Brock (FINN)
The Hon Miss Emma Edwards:
Mr Speaker, Honourable members, in rising to support the Motion I would like to address the House very briefly. Firstly I would like to welcome Brigadier Bill Aldridge. I hope you enjoy your stay here in the Islands. Do get out and take all those Penguin photographs. I am sure you will have an absolutely great time.
Secondly I would like to welcome Mike back on to Council again. Congratulations; and I look forward to working with you in the near future.
Quite rightly people are asking questions about the “Golden Hole.” This is the hard standing area that has been made a secure area. I must say that when Members agreed to this project it was a very different situation. We were told that to retain the container contract with SAAS was the only way to do that was to get a secure container park. And we were told that where the old containers were kept was insecure and that sometimes the Reefer Containers had their plugs pulled out. This meant that the Fishing industry didn’t have the confidence to ship fish with SAAS but a secure container park would change all this. Events changed and SAAS is not currently running a service.
Hindsight is always 20/20 and I do believe we may have made a different decision. However, a secure container park is essential. I do believe that once a shipping link is established this area will be used. As my fellow Honourable members will confirm the Falkland Islands Government is committed to establishing a container shipping service. This park will be used and I hope the secure facilities will encourage our fishing industry to have the confidence to use this and ship their product from this new service.
Housing is still a problem for people in these Islands. I was delighted when the plan to build plots under Sappers’ Hill was approved by EXCO. I believe that this new development will provide plots for many years to come and that plots will be available for the private sector as well as some retail sites.
I do hope Government will give higher priority to housing suitable for our younger population. Government Housing was created to aid people to save for their own homes and I was very disappointed when the rents were increased. And I know that this rent increase has hit some of our families very hard. I do not believe Government rents should be in line with the private sector but to be kept at a rate suitable for people to start to save to either build or buy their own homes.
Finally, I am really delighted at the progress that’s being made for the move to the museum to the historic dockyards. I was very impressed with the young architect, Liz, who has been employed to design the site and I really congratulate everybody involved in this particular project. I wish them well.
Thank you very much Mr Speaker.
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