By Olivia Rose From TCI Weekly News

PUBLIC consultations on the new National Physical Development Plan (NPDP) will begin on Monday (January 20), Deputy Premier Sean Astwood has announced.

The revised plan, which has not been updated since 1997, will guide the Government’s decisions on development throughout the territory, with a focus on sustainability.

Speaking at the Government’s three year anniversary press conference on January 7, Astwood said consultations will take place from January 20 to 24.

The NPDP is a medium range sustainable development plan, with a ten year vision geared towards broadening the scope of infrastructure investment across the TCI.

Astwood, also Minister of Infrastructure, Housing and Planning, said it will provide a broad strategic overview of all major issues relevant to national development planning.

“The NPDP is meant to be a strategic planning tool for facilitating and giving directions to decisions so that it can contribute to economic efficiency and to the achievement of social goals and objectives, while preserving the natural environment.

“Most importantly, it is destined to be a strategy for sustainable development that brings together the aspirations and capabilities of government, civil society and the private sector to create a vision for the future, and work together tactically and progressively towards it.”
In March 2017, Premier Sharlene Cartwright Robinson released a tender to update the plan – but no bids were placed.

At the time she stressed that a small territory such as the TCI needed to make changes to the plan if it intended to grow in a sustainable manner.

“Any country with limited resources and small land space as us, wants to plan how we are going to use the rest of that land, and the national physical development plan is actually something included in legislation which the former government made a commitment to do in two years.”
She further stated that the populace expects the Government to be one that manages and plans the finances and development of the country and that she intends to ensure this happens.

“Too often we have allowed this country to just boom and then we woke up and realised that it developed this way and we are stuck with the way it developed.

“We should plan for the limited resources in this country and we will never shy away from the fact that we want to and will deliver for this country a national physical development plan.”

She said the last National Physical Development Plan expired in 1997.

For more on this story go to: https://tcweeklynews.com/public-input-on-development-plan-needed-from-monday-p10281-127.htm