Penn says gov’t tone-deaf after ‘tourist in pothole’ photo
Eighth District Representative Marlon Penn has accused the government of being tone-deaf following the publication of a photo on social media which showed a tourist posing in a pothole near the Tortola Pier Park.
The pothole was reportedly filled by staff of the Public Works Department less than 24 hours after the photo first made its rounds.
This left many residents questioning why their complaints about pothole-filled roads have been ignored for years. It also led to the posting of a number of copycat photos of persons posing in other potholes that also needed to be filled.
In addition to the pothole problem, Penn said many people are faced with tough decisions on whether to pay their light bill or put food on their table.
“Many of them are opting not to pay their light bill and hope that it doesn’t get cut for a month or two and then they could hold on and find some money or somebody to assist them to help pay this bill,” he expressed.
Penn added: “It seems that the government is tone-deaf to these issues. You saw where there was a picture of a tourist in a pothole. In less than 12 or 24 hours it was fixed. And there was one up in my constituency with a pot actually in a hole up Hope Hill. You know, so these are the real concerns that people have.”
Over the years, there have been numerous complaints about the road conditions in the territory, including in the East End area which Penn represents. The District Representative complained that his car could barely make the drive from Beef Island to the East End Police station.
Penn said young people are paying attention and noted that a young person complained to him recently and requested his thoughts on the neglect of the roads in the territory.
According to Penn, he was asked whether it was an issue of competence that the roads continued to be neglected after the government announced that its asphalt plant was up and running.
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THEY DO NOT GIVE A DAM. PLAIN AS DAY.
You are correct. Your govt does not care about you. Only tourists
Hey it’s a tourist attraction. Arizona has the Grand Canyon. Tortola has the now internationally famous BVI Canyon Potholes. Obviously he is not seeing the marketing pitch of the BVI government. I am already having T-shirt’s created……
Funny thing about the Caribbean… you go Antigua and your friends apologise about their roads and we just laff. Same in St Thomas- Rock people always apologising about their roads. We always say you want to see awful roads come Tortola.
I am trying to get to the BVI as quickly as possible. I hope I am not too late. There is interest here in the possibility of direct flights.
WRONG GOVERNMENT….BLAME THE GREEDY ANGUILLIANS
This place is not going to get any better unless there is a big change in the way the country is run.
#photographbvipotholes
Encourage tourists to post pics of their chosen potholes on social media. Then the Gov may rush to fix them. Perhaps we can follow up with
#potwoodpondnoxiousfumes
#roadtownopensewers
or the all encompassing
#bviinfrastructurethirdworld
You hit the nail on the head. THATS what you call a ‘tourism is everybody’s business’ plan. I AM BEGGING ALL TOURISTS OR ANYONE WHO CAN PASS FOR A TOURIST, plsssss can you post on social media pics of yourselves in aaaalllll the potholes in this 4th world country so that the HARD HEADED government can finally get it? Imagine, we have a junior minister for tourism ALL THE WAY IN MONACO just before tourist season opened and she claims that the TRIP, the expensive trip, was more necessary. We have a works minister who just starting to look more and more like a cookie monster and of course we can not leave out our very own, ever so incompetent premier. 3 people and NOT ONE have enough SENSE to make the place tourism ready. Standing ovations for the clown show please (encore)
Watch them scramble now to fix that one strip of road now just because something happen now make them look bad. They cant fix the roads for us who live here and got to drive on them every day but the minute something embarrassing like this happen watch them scramble to get something do like it ain’t needed doing all the time.
The issue in BVI is that it is not in the interests of the government or the contractors to build proper roads of the standard you see elsewhere.
God knows we have had the funds to do a proper job over the years, but the money seems to have evaporated.
The fact the roads always need repairing is because they are built badly in the first place, then repeatedly patched. This means there are frequent “reasons” to justify the transfer of tax payer funds to contractors.
If the work was done properly this money fountain would dry up.
One can only speculate as to why this approach has become so established. I think there some clues in the CoI report, though.
this hole wasn’t so bad remember stove hole at brandy wine bay
After seeing tis hole the tourist probably did not want to risk life and limb going as far as Brandywine. Rest of us have to deal with this disgrace everyday but tourist just gets back on the ship and tell everyone he knows what he knows about the VI.
Koy talking about the budget he not talking about people getting work. If u not there friend u can’t get work. Because the friend give them back money. I can’t wait to vote them out
And yet the tour buses drive on Windy Hill road every day.
So what, because a tourist took a picture of a pothole, the earth suppose to stop orbit the sun or the bvi suppose to close down, are there any potholes where that tourist came from, i bet you there is, so what, its just a dam pothole, strupsssssss.
you missed the point.
The point is that the BVI people, living in the BVI deserve to have the same quality of life and living conditions as everyone else. That means good roads to drive your car on so you aren’t spending money on car repairs due to falling in a hole. Money which is hard enough now, that you can use for other things. My father who lives in the US, has not changed his tires in years all because the roads he drives on does not cause the kind of wear and tear that BVI roads causes. By contrast my tires don’t last a year. Come on man.
Makes you want to lower your head and adjust your wig.
incompetence in government for years.
Public works could easily put cement in the holes when they appear, but are busy cutting brush for private residents.
too many government workers doing very little.
country cannot sustain paying all these individuals.
Part of the#Bvipothole challenge..let’s go viral on this..shame has positive reactions
Oh well pothole, stinking sewage. Pot cursing the kettle. The 8th will be grrrrt without this nymph.
No to UK!! We do not wish to be dominated again by the most cruelest of humanity against humaity ever again.
Meanwhile, The country is not going to get or become a better place to live, work, raise our children and be happy until we change, from the inside, the type of people we are and have become.
Until we change the way we think, live, raise and treat our children and others, we will make no disernable positive steps forward.
Until we view and interact with others of our own kind with love, compassion, emphaty caring, we will make no discernable human progress forward.
Why? the people we elect as leaders are us. They are from us. They do in office just what we would do, if in office.
Therefore, if something is or goes wrong with them after being elected, then something is also wrong with us.
So we must change ourselves into what we should and want the to be.
For, we cannot expect a pig to evolve into a beautiful humming bird. And, we should not expect an elected leader to be different from his human source, the people from which he came from to be elected.
We are the people from whence the elected was chosen. Hence, if the elected is not good, then we are not good. Therefore, stop pointing fingers at and blaming the elected for all our wrongs. hastize ourselves equally as much as we chastize them.
We are all the same and we came out of the same pot.
If all that is true, then we must begin changing ourselves.
The big change in the manner in which the country is run is directly relaed the change in how we run our lives, thoughts, thinking, actions and existing.
If you can understand this message, begin to help make that change in you, of you, and those around you.
The country will not change without people changing it. Hence, we must create the peopele with the correct mind for good change, to put in office, to create that change, to change the country.WE must change we.
Marlon you need to organise a march. The roads are so bad and nothing being done. Its quite clear no one here knows how to build roads. Lets get on our feet and march and get our voices heard. Instead of just trashing our cars in silence. i know pot holes thay are 4 years old.
the cop training sht?????
that video got every fool rooster in gov yapping. this? you gonna bag on the tourist? there’s 500 ppl for every one of these, telling friends how rude, or slow service and gov, or fk up the roads is , talking to friends, who aint gonna come here and give you money . .