Premier and Minister of Finance Dr. the Honourable Natalio has said that despite the Elmore Stoutt High School Redevelopment Project not finishing in its intended deadline period, the work achieved in approximately four months is simply phenomenal.
Premier Wheatley was responding to questions posed by the media following the backlash he received on his recent assurance to the public that the school was still on track for its September reopening date.
The premier urged residents to stop focusing on the negatives as there are many positives resulting from the project that should be recognised and commended.
“We tend to as a community, sometimes not all the time, seek to focus on the negative. On the Elmore Stoutt High School Campus, we haven’t had a new building since Lavity Stoutt was alive. That L Audority Turnbull building, that was built when I was in high school, nothing was built since then,” he stated.
“So we’ve actually established I believe it’s three buildings there that will be able to help meet the needs of the students and if it is delayed a month or a few weeks, certainly we can’t let that overshadow the fact that the children will very soon have more accommodations and will be able to shift from Clarence Thomas building in Pasea that’s not designed to be a school,” Dr. Wheatley added.
Work done in record time
Premier Wheatley who is the former education minister also said that everyone involved in the project should be commended for the volume of work achieved in such a short space of time.
He said, “I’m not going to let any person dampen my spirits for the progress that has been made on that project, which is really record time if we really look at it. That project started sometime around April or so. I mean, that’s a phenomenal amount of work if you look at the work that has been done up until this point, it’s really phenomenal. The RDA and the contractors should be commended in my view…and the ministry.”
Contractors working to have the project finished as soon as possible
The leader of government business also sought to clarify the statement he had previously issued on the September date, stating that at the time he did mention about the project experiencing a delay.
He said all parties involved are working tirelessly to have the school completed as soon as possible.
“I just want to clarify, I think it was reported correctly in the news, but persons seem to ignore the fact that I said there was going to be a slight delay…but we were still pushing not for the beginning of September but we were pushing towards the end of September considering the slight delay. Unfortunately very soon after that statement was made the RDA received information that the windows and the doors were delayed unfortunately, but the good news is that the windows and doors, at least some of them, have been received,” the premier expressed.