11th May 2016

The Ministry of Health and the Environment now has a new Permanent Secretary and less than a week on the job, Walter Christopher is already making plans to transform and upgrade a few of the Ministry's aging facilities.

Christopher, who replaced Mrs. Hildred Simpson on May 9th, outlined several plans to improve the general appearance of a number of buildings which play a major role in the health care delivery system.

"Infrastructurally, the Ministry seems to be challenged infrastructurally, clinics needs to be repaired, we need to do some work at Clarevue, some work at Fiennes, and a number of things that we have to look at but from where I sit at this point it seems that infrastructure is what we have to address mainly", Christopher said.

Mr. Christopher who has served as Permanent Secretary at the Ministry of Works before his recent appointment, described his five-and-a-half year tenure at Public Works as fruitful and rewarding despite the many challenges he faced, particularly working with limited resources.

"It was a challenging experience at Public Works, having to oversee the infrastructural development of the island with very limited money; it was tight especially since our capital expenditure was cut by almost seventy percent but I think that we did pretty well, especially dealing with the road works and the maintenance of Government Buildings and we put strategies in place to move the process forward although we had limited finances", he continued.

Christopher, who is married and the father of two children, has spent over thirty two (32) years in the public service where he served as an engineer in the Ministry of Agriculture for over eighteen years and then as Property Tax Administrator at Inland Revenue.

For More Information Contact:
Debbie Francis
Communication Officer
Tel: (268) 464-8026