Government surveyors to visit site of protests on Canouan

by Lyf Compton

Officials from the Land and Survey Department are expected to visit Canouan on Wednesday to determine whether a gate being constructed by developers is within the boundaries of the resort or if it spans the public road.

The visit of the government surveyors comes days after protests broke out on the southern Grenadine isle when residents observed that a gate was being constructed by Canouan Resorts Development (CRD) in an area that provides access to several of the island’s beaches, including L’Ance Guyac and Godahl.

a gate being constructed by Canouan Resorts Development (CRD) is in an area that provides access to several of the island’s beaches, including L’Ance Guyac and Godahl.

Access to the beaches is controlled by CRD and those wishing to visit the beaches must inform security personnel where they are going. At present, traffic wishing to go past the check point is controlled with the use of a hand operated boom. Members of the public are usually asked to park their vehicles in the resort and are given rides to the beach in the resort’s golf carts.

Debra Foyle-Snagg, the main organizer of the protests told SEARCHLIGHT on Monday that the proposed gate is creating anxiety among community members. She said as far as they are concerned, the boom is adequate and allows them to interact with security officers easily.

The community activist said people fear that with this gate, interaction with security officers will become problematic and access will be a problem.

She said she first observed the construction on August 4 when she happened to be in the area.

“I see a bob cat digging up the broadside of the road and cutting in the middle road,” she told SEARCHLIGHT on Monday while noting that she took pictures and made them public.

“We had a town hall meeting with about 45 persons chaired by me and we agreed to start a protest to stop the gate because they were working really fast,” Foyle-Snagg said.

She said “persons in authority” asked to give them some time to see what was going on, but no one stopped the workers.

“The work never stopped until I came here to put down my foot,” stated Foyle-Snagg while noting that the resort erected two gates in a different location where guests enter and leave, but she is baffled as to why they want to erect this “huge” gate at this spot.

“Why you take such a drastic step to put up a gate?…and if you see the height of the columns…and the wall they are building is a double wall so you know they can’t hear you when you come to go to the beach.

“It is a trick to say they will let us in…these people, you can’t trust them any more because everything they say, they not doing,” said an outspoken and irate Foyle-Snagg.

“We want the columns taken down and the road patched back,” she said, while noting that the columns were cast last Thursday and they have still not heard anything from any official source.

Foyle-Snagg said on Friday, she and another female were detained by police on Canouan in relation to the protest action. They were later released without charge.

Foyle-Snagg told SEARCHLIGHT that on the same day she was detained, parliamentary representative for the Southern Grenadines Terrence Ollivierre visited the resort and seems to have held a meeting with developers.

He later visited her at the police station where she was detained.

Ollivierre told SEARCHLIGHT on Monday that he would comment on the issue at a later date.

Calls to CRD management were unanswered.

Foyle-Snagg, while speaking from the picket line, told SEARCHLIGHT on Monday that she contacted the Physical Planning Department and was told that there is no application for the construction of a gate, “in the government road”.

She said in her opinion, the gate will become a big issue if erected as while some persons do not have problems going to the beach, others have been refused entry.

“…So we can’t trust them. We don’t want this gate.”

Beach access in the north of Canouan has been an issue of contention since 1990 when the Sir James Mitchell administration leased 1,200 acres of the 1,800 acre island (two-thirds) to the CRD for 99 years.

When contacted on Monday, Director of Grenadines Affairs Edwin Snagg said that any time citizens feel aggrieved by any particular situation, they have a right to peaceful protest.

“What we are protesting about must be rational,” Snagg said, while noting that the erection of the electronic gate is creating concerns in the community, but the problem is that it is hard to tell someone that has ownership or management of a property to not erect a gate if they see it fit to do so.

“Of course you will know that the resort, the entire area, 1,200 acres was … leased [to them] for 100 years with whatever terms or conditions…,”said Snagg while adding that all of the roads that lead to the beaches pass through the resort and they were there before the resort was built.

He said the lease mandates that members of the public must have access to these roads which must be properly maintained.

“My principal concern is whether there is a gate or whether there is a boom…my thing is the question of access to the beaches up at the north, which we know in St Vincent and the Grenadines is public and the investors know that,” Snagg said.

Chief Surveyor Keith Francis told SEARCHLIGHT on Monday that surveyors from his department will be visiting the island on Wednesday, August 30 to take measurements. He said he had been told that the developers are simply changing from a barrier to a gate in approximately the same location. However, he declined to comment further, pending the findings of the surveyors, whose mission is to verify whether this is the case.