Minister of Public Works Lt/Col David Burch spoke about farming in the House of Assembly on Friday, providing an overview of the situation with the Bascomes, leases on other Government plots of arable land, with the Minister noting the PLP’s pledge to “lease the many acres of government arable land that are currently not being used in order to boost domestic food production.”

The Minister said, “On July 18th, 2017, Bermuda experienced a change of Government. It was not unexpected, and so, this may sound to you like an unnecessary statement; but in order for all of us to understand what this means in terms of impact, I must start at the beginning.

“The ‘beginning’ is captured in the PLP’s Election Platform, there, we identified those things we wanted to accomplish during our term of office.

“For example we stated: Your next PLP Government will make government more efficient by undertaking a comprehensive review of the Public Service Commission legislation.” [Amendments to the Public Service Commission published just before Christmas 2016 changed the role of the Public Service Commission from an impartial appointing authority for senior civil servants to a politicized semi-executive body that will set performance goals for senior civil servants”.]

“What does this have to do with the role of senior civil servants? The civil service has an important role in readying themselves for a change whenever a General Election takes place. Usually the Secretary to the Cabinet prepares two dossiers, explaining how they will accommodate each Party’s agenda.

Read more here: http://bernews.com/2018/07/minister-david-burch-on-farming-in-bermuda/