Tai­wan is pro­vid­ing sev­en mil­lion dol­lars (One EC dol­lar=US$0.37 cents) to St. Lu­cia to ad­dress var­i­ous so­cial and de­vel­op­men­tal needs in com­mu­ni­ties through­out the is­land.

A gov­ern­ment state­ment said that five mil­lion dol­lars will be used to sup­port the Small In­fra­struc­ture Projects Ini­tia­tive be­ing im­ple­ment­ed by the St. Lu­cia So­cial De­vel­op­ment Fund (SS­DF) and aimed at im­prov­ing dai­ly life and liv­ing stan­dards in tar­get­ed com­mu­ni­ties by build­ing and re­ha­bil­i­tat­ing new and ex­ist­ing lo­cal in­fra­struc­ture.

The state­ment said that more than 250 com­mu­ni­ty roads and bridges, foot­paths and walk­ways, walls, dwellings and drains in all 17 con­stituen­cies will re­ceive at­ten­tion and that in ad­di­tion to en­hanc­ing com­mu­ni­ty in­fra­struc­ture, the Small In­fra­struc­ture Projects Ini­tia­tive will cre­ate at least 700 new jobs, up­skill labour­ers and gen­er­ate sig­nif­i­cant eco­nom­ic ac­tiv­i­ty.

It said that one mil­lion dol­lars will be al­lo­cat­ed to the Min­istry of Agri­cul­ture to re­ha­bil­i­tate and mod­ern­ize the Vieux-Fort Fish­eries Com­plex, south of here and that fish­ers and stake­hold­ers op­er­at­ing there can ex­pect nu­mer­ous phys­i­cal en­hance­ments to the fa­cil­i­ty.

“This in­vest­ment will en­hance safe­ty and hy­giene stan­dards for fish­ers, strength­en the struc­tur­al in­tegri­ty of the fa­cil­i­ty, and im­prove the over­all façade and aes­thet­ics of the com­plex, re­sult­ing in a more invit­ing cus­tomer ex­pe­ri­ence.”

The gov­ern­ment said that it will soon be­gin con­struc­tion of a new Soufriere El­der­ly/Se­nior Day Care Cen­tre Project and that cit­i­zens can ex­pect high-qual­i­ty care­giv­er ser­vices that in­clude per­son­al care and su­per­vi­sion, ther­a­peu­tic recre­ation and so­cial ac­tiv­i­ties as well as day­time com­pan­ion­ship from qual­i­fied care­givers.