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TURKS AND CAICOS POST CABINET MEETING STATEMENT

His Excellency the Governor, Peter Beckingham, chaired the 12th meeting of the Cabinet on Thursday, 14 April 2016, at the Hon. Hilly Ewing Building on Providenciales.

TCI Cabinet Meeting

All Ministers were present.

At this meeting Cabinet:

  • Received a presentation by the Commissioner of Police on the latest crime statistics for TCI, on the police response and on training programmes for the RTCIPF. Cabinet was introduced to Mr Marc Callaghan, the new Deputy Commissioner of Police;

  • Received a presentation by Mrs Claudia Vargas (Consultant) on the water and sewerage policy and regulatory up-grade for Grand Turk and Salt Cay and gave feedback on the recommendations and proposed up-grades and changes in the consultancy findings;

  • Noted the recommendations of the Procurement Board to award a contract in line with the Public Procurement Ordinance 2012 as follows – TR15/84 H J Robinson High School rebuilding works;

  • Advised His Excellency the Governor to approve amendments made to the draft Micro, Small and Medium Enterprise Development Regulations to include a register for concessions for monitoring purposes and to ratify the decision of the Minister of Finance to make the Regulations with effect from 1 April 2016;

  • Advised His Excellency the Governor to approve the key provisions in the term sheets of a $15 million loan to TCI from the RBC Royal Bank (Bahamas Ltd) for capital expenditure projects for 2016/17 and to approve a new Ordinance related to that for forwarding to the House of Assembly for approval;

  • Advised His Excellency the Governor to approve the formation of a working group to work with Carnival Corporation to review existing agreements, future lease arrangements, activity and construction projects;

  • Approved the appointments of the following members to the Board of the TCI Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) as follows – Mr Erwin J Saunders (Chairman) and Mr Benson Harvey (Member) for a period of three years with effect from 1 April 2016;

  • Agreed to renew the lease agreement for the Environmental Health Department at the Butterfield Square office complex on Providenciales for a period of 3 years;

  • Agreed to the extension to TCI of the 1954 Hague Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict and its two protocols by local legislation. The 1954 Hague Convention provides a system to protect cultural property from the effects of international and domestic armed conflict. Parties to the Convention are required to respect cultural property situated within the territory of other Parties by not attacking it, and to respect cultural property within their own territory by not using it for purposes which are likely to expose it to destruction or damage during armed conflict;

  • Approved, with amendments, the recommendations (with comments by DEMA) of the Minister for the Department of Environment and Maritime Affairs’ (DEMA), for amendments to the National Parks Ordinance and Regulations.

Further information on these matters will be provided by Ministers in due course.

Published 18 April 2016