'Let them carry on with their mischief, we have nothing to hide' – Hon Vincent O. Wheatley
Among those with this message is Minister for Natural Resources, Labour and Immigration, Honourable Vincent O. Wheatley (R9) who at the Saturday, January 23, 2021 community meeting in Baughers Bay stressed that the CoI is a move to dissuade the government from its mission to empower residents.
“Ever since we got elected, for a matter of fact, when we ran, we ran on two or three very specific things we wanted to achieve for this territory. One of them is the empowerment of the people and that message was so well taken, so well received that it got some people scared.”
One of the clear policies of the Virgin Islands Party (VIP) Government has been about empowering its own people and this was recently seen with the swearing-in of Dawn J. Smith as a first local attorney general in some 20 years.
It has maintained that locals are capable of filling top posts in the territory.
This was also highlighted with the passing of the Disaster Management Act 2020, which, among other things, seeks to return the responsibility to local government.
Gov't going too far!
According to Hon Wheatley, not everyone was pleased with the Government's agenda of people empowerment.
“They said you people are going too far with this empowerment idea. So they are trying their best to dissuade us from continuing down that trend, but the only way we are going to go, one way, the empowerment of our people to handle their own affairs at some point or the other, there is no turning back, I don’t care what they try, we are on this path and we are going to stay there,” the Minister said.
Hon Wheatley also reflected that the Virgin Islands Party (VIP) had campaigned on the platform of transforming the territory and it has been moving in that direction.
“And transform we will transform the BVI, we are not going back we are going forward, and when we go forward we will continue to go even further forward.”
'There will be more attacks'- Hon Wheatley
He warned; however, that there will be resistance to the plans.
“So you’ll see these attacks here, and many more to come, but we know from whence our strength comes from so we are not afraid, we are all sleeping good at nights we have nothing to hide, we have nothing to be afraid, so let them carry on with their mischief, let them carry on with their mischief, it's ok.
“You don’t have to fear anything about this government here, everything is transparent, plain and accountable.”
Hon Wheatley said the government has been taking its time to cross the Is and dot the Ts, which resulted in some things taking longer than expected, “And that’s why some things have been taking so long to happen during this pandemic, we got to make sure, we said it, these things are going to be audited we had to make sure every T was crossed and every I dotted.
“And yall complained saying why it take so long, not yall, understand why we took the time that all systems of accountability were in place because we know the possibility of this happening and here we are, here we are now, a commission of inquiry. Every newspaper all over the world, BVI is a croak, drug dealers, BVI has stolen money, all sort of madness pure foolishness, they will not detract us from our mission and our purpose of empowering you the people. That is our pledge to you all, and once we pledge it we are going to do it.”
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25 Responses to “'Let them carry on with their mischief, we have nothing to hide' – Hon Vincent O. Wheatley”
Sold us out to Mr. Gates and company set of wussies, can’t believe y’all did this to y’all own people, only the was who knows what’s going on will understand my statement
A few months ago you said that there was too much accountability requested and therefore your staff did not dare to produce any accounts or do any work.
And now you say there is nothing to hide.
Which one is it?
and by the way...when you say THEY told us you going too far with this empowering of the people..WHO said that ?????? you cant paint a picture like that without giving us facts...not just sayong what you want to justify your statements. WHO said that to you.
respectfully if not frustratingly submitted
- obtain obtain a certificate from the NHI;
- obtain a certificate from the Social Security Board;
- obtain, I think, a certificate from the Inland Revenue;
- prepare and submit an application for each of those authorities for each of those certificates;
- make a separate payment for each;
- naturally, effect payments via a Nineteenth Century means of payment (no ‘click of the button’ efficiency for our Minister); and
- spend one’s time filling out all those forms and running around town getting those certificates etc. from government authorities so that they can be submitted to a government authority.
Minister, you like to dot the ‘I’s and cross the ‘T’s. Wonderful. But we migrant workers have jobs to do. Spending our resources and time or those of our employer on the above isn’t productive. Please start valuing our time and resources and those of our employers. With remarkable ingenuity you have managed to wind back much progress made by the last government on processing of work permits. This alone is something worthy of consideration by the Commission of Inquiry. It may not be corruption, but it is gross mal-administration. You’ve taken a sledgehammer to crack a nut. You’ve put us in a time machine and brought us back several decades to a time when this sort of bureaucracy was less remarkable. And no doubt you take a sense of pride in having done so!