Dear Editor – The above article on your paper is a harmonious melody to my ears as far as the Honiara’s Central Business District (CBD) is concerned.
I’d like to commend the Mayor and his team for this very important initiative and vision. It is an issue that’s been long overdue and needs immediate attention.
In fact it should be applied to the whole of Honiara and not just Point Cruz.
A few years back, I remember a tourist boat berthing at Point Cruz and a tourist took a taxi and wanted to go to the CBD of Honiara.
The conversation went something like this:
Tourist: “Take me to the center of the town”.
Taxi driver: “Okay”.
They drove from Point Cruz to China Town. When they stopped at China Town the tourist asked:
Tourist: “Is this the Center of the town?
Taxi driver: “No, center of town is where I picked you up”.
Two things are obvious here. One is communication breakdown. The taxi driver obviously thought the tourist wanted to go to China Town, while the tourist wanted to go to the center of town.
The second and one that stands out clear is that the tourist couldn’t work out whether Point Cruz was the Central part of Honiara or just a part of the Ports area.
Mayor, can you and the Town and Country Planning Board, the Physical Planning Division of the Honiara City Council, the Physical Planning Division of the Ministry of Lands and Housing and the Ministry of Infrastructure Development come up with a model of what you would like the places you would demolish to look like after it’s being re-developed?
I mentioned the others, that is if they are involved in this planned demolition and planning of the re-development. Otherwise you can do it.
Get a model of the whole of Point Cruz and I suggest you begin from where Frangipani ice ended and create a model of what you visualize Point Cruz to be in five to ten years. Then work towards that goal.
Point Cruz, according to that tourist and even most of us is not like a Central Business District at all. So let’s help give Honiara a face-lift that we and our future generation could be proud of.
By the way, I believe it is an injustice to the people of Honiara and Solomon Islands as a whole to use Tongs and Chengs frames to do this re-development. It makes our place look like warehouses and a maximum prison facility. That wan hem no face-lift ya! Livim go lo China Town and nafu go lo dea na!
If our local people could come up with a wonderful building like the one next to Kukum Hot Bread, then I see no reason why businesses who have been operating and ripping off our people for far too long could come up with such disgusting buildings as we see sprung up around Honiara.
Town and Country Planning and the Physical Planning Boards have to be tough and tell them what types of buildings you want for Point Cruz.
If we revert to such types of buildings again, then it just shows that some of us have had our pockets filled up so as to allow people to build whatever plans they want erected as we’ve seen around Honiara.
The problem with a lot of us is that we do not have any civic pride about our place at all. Honiara is the gateway to Solomon Islands, yet we never pride ourselves in keeping it clean, construct attractive buildings and build public recreational areas as well as parks.
No wonder name nomoa children’s park lo Rove ia. Adults nomoa full time lo dea go go naet! Ma reservim ples fo park tu?
However, Lord Mayor, you have the power to revoke land under a buy back scheme and then re-develop Honiara and include recreation and public amenities as well.
Right now I want to play ‘wait and see’ not ‘hide and seek’.
Jackson Ray
Fulton College
Nadi, Fiji Islands
