President of the Abaco Chamber of Commerce, Daphne DeGregory-Miaoulis spoke with ZNS News on the migrant issue on the island after the government issues notices of demolition to shantytown residents.
Degregory-Miaoulis said, “the rebuild of Abaco post Dorian has greatly been using the labour force of these same persons that we’re taking about and they’re here on Abaco because work is here. So they are actually contributing to the rebuild of Abaco which is a positive thing on one side.”
The Chamber President opined that the communities in question are “really not a shanty as one might think. In many case they have been well constructed. However, they don’t have any of the infrastructure that a domicile should have like no plumbing, no electric, no cesspit, so the environment is being affected because everything is going into the ground.”
Degregory-Miaoulis suggested a solution to the issue would be for government to “identify a piece of property that can be cut up where they can buy it at an affordable rate and repay it and then build legally with some kind of basic infrastructure. Then we’ve got to make sure that the opportunity that we offer, these particular group of people, is for them alone.”
Notices were issue for the demolition of 95 shantytown structures in January.
