British Virgin Islands: Premier and Minister responsible for Ports Dr. D. Orlando Smith has said government is putting the necessary mechanisms in place to address the large crowd that comes to the Road Town and West End ports of entry from St. Thomas, particularly on weekends, the BVInews.com reported.
Speaking on NDP Radio this week, Dr. Smith said: “Where I live in McNamara you can look down, and particularly on Saturday afternoons, the lines, when they come in, are so long and the time they take to go through; it can take up to two hours or more and it’s really not right for us to be welcoming our visitors in this way.
“What has actually happened, as we have been experiencing difficulty in airlift via Puerto Rico and into Beef Island, our visitors are now coming through St. Thomas, and more and more of them are coming through St Thomas, and our ports, both Road Town and West End, were not designed for this kind of flow of traffic. And so we have a situation where with this increase in demand we have to do something about it, both from a point of view of providing extra customs and immigration services and also by providing more space. When people arrive by the boats they are out there, open to the elements, and sometimes it rains and they get wet and their luggage gets wet, so something has to be done,” Premier Smith added.
The BVInes.com stated that he said the Minister of Communications and Works Mark Vanterpool is also very concerned and he has already begun to work on this.
Dr. Smith said he would again be holding talks with Minister Vanterpool to see how they could accommodate both incoming and outgoing passengers in a better way.
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