Efforts to establish a credit union in the Point and Villa communities – primarily to assist with home improvements – are gathering momentum with construction now underway.
The addition of a credit union in the area has been mentioned several times by Prime Minister Gaston Browne, who is also the parliamentary representative for the St John’s City West constituency which Villa and Point fall under.
PM Browne, while speaking over the weekend, revealed that construction had already begun.
“We have made significant progress with the People’s Cooperative Credit Union. A business plan was done since last year and we started construction of the building for the credit union,” he said.
This week, he continued, “we will be casting the foundation of the 4,000 square feet building to be constructed at a cost of about 1.2 million dollars. We also have pledges of another 1.5 million dollars so this will turn out to be a very, very impressive credit union. We just want to keep the people informed about this credit union,” Browne explained.
He also spoke about some of the objectives of the organisation.
“This is an institution to meet the needs of the underserved and unbanked persons in the community to encourage wider savings and at the same time to provide loans primarily for home improvements.
“This is going to be the major thrust of this organisation because I noticed in the St John’s City West constituency, we still have a lot of dilapidated homes and we want to provide more accessible funding for our people to get loans to repair the homes or even expand the homes as some homes do not have proper toilet facilities,” he added.
Despite the credit union being built for the purpose of helping the Villa and Point residents financially, PM Browne noted that it will be open for the entire country as well.