Dear Editor,
It is ironic to see the Spanish Ambassador, Sr Jesus Silva, claiming Spain as Jamaica's "premier investor" (Sunday Observer, June 10), just prior to the Tuesday Observer headline, "Court threat hangs over Spanish hotel".

The St James Parish Council is threatening to take Clubhotel RIU at Mahoe Bay to court, alleging that not only has construction started without the required planning permission, but they have continued to build in defiance of a stop-work notice.

The RIU hotels have a particularly poor environmental record in Jamaica. All of them have breached their various permits - RIU Hotel Tropical Bay in Negril cleared the site in breach of permit conditions, RIU Jamaicotel (also in Negril) had its permit suspended in August 2002 owing to lack of compliance; RIU Mammee Bay started without a permit, and both the government town planner and the National Environment and Planning Agency (NEPA) issued stop orders in June 2004. RIU Mammee Bay then went on to build the sewage plant without a permit; a second stop order was issued by NEPA in July 2004.

The Fiesta hotel currently being built in Lucea has also committed a raft of environmental breaches, according to monitoring reports obtained under the Access to Information Act. NEPA served them with an intention to suspend their permit on May 1, 2007.

In the case of the Gran Bahia Principe hotel in Runaway Bay, they were in breach of their permit to inject treated sewage into a deep well in the rainy season only.
In nearly every case, the Spanish hotels have utterly disregarded our planning and environmental laws, and apart from threatening letters and short-lived shut-downs, our regulatory agencies have let them get away with it.
If these are our "premier investments", we are in deep trouble.

Diana McCaulay
Chief Executive Officer
Jamaica Environment Trust
11 Waterloo Road
Kingston 6

Trousers in Denim

Cream of the 'Crop'

Cheeky's World