San Fer­nan­do May­or Ju­nia Re­grel­lo has tak­en of­fence to Sen­a­tor Allyson West’s de­scrip­tion of the south­ern city as a shan­ty town, de­scrib­ing her re­marks as ex­treme­ly un­for­tu­nate.

Dur­ing the de­bate on Petrotrin’s re­fin­ery in Par­lia­ment on Tues­day, West said she was a “proud mem­ber of San Fer­nan­do” hav­ing grown up there with “pride and hope pro­pelled by the ex­is­tence of Tex­a­co and Petrotrin.”

How­ev­er, the Min­is­ter in the Min­istry of Fi­nance said she was dis­tressed by the fact that San Fer­nan­do seems to be be­com­ing more and more of a shan­ty town.

Her re­marks did not sit well with the may­or who in a state­ment is­sued on Wednes­day, stat­ed San Fer­nan­do was on the cusp of de­vel­op­ment and has at­tract­ed bil­lions of dol­lars in in­vest­ment over the past five years.

Re­grel­lo said over the last two years, the San Fer­nan­do City Cor­po­ra­tion, San Fer­nan­do East MP Ran­dall Mitchell and San Fer­nan­do West MP Faris Al-Rawi have been work­ing to im­prove the aes­thet­ics of San Fer­nan­do and oth­er ar­eas to im­prove pro­duc­tiv­i­ty in the city.

“This is a work-in-progress as we pa­tient­ly await the projects that are com­ing on stream, such as the wa­ter­front de­vel­op­ment, up­grades to Skin­ner Park, the Chancery Lane mul­ti-storey carpark and two high-end mul­ti-storey res­i­den­tial com­plex­es by the pri­vate sec­tor. These projects in con­junc­tion with the Phoenix Park In­dus­tri­al com­plex will all yield pos­i­tive re­turns to San Fer­nan­di­ans and South­ern­ers by ex­ten­sion.”

“It is my view that San Fer­nan­do is on the cusp of de­vel­op­ment where the ben­e­fits will re­dound to our cit­i­zens and look for­ward to an im­proved stan­dard of liv­ing. If there is any mer­it in state­ments re­cent­ly made, I re­main hope­ful based on the knowl­edge that some of these projects are due to com­mence by the end of March.”

Boost­ing of the bil­lions of dol­lars in­vest­ed in San Fer­nan­do in the last five years, Re­grel­lo al­lud­ed to the UTT Cam­pus, South­Park Shop­ping Com­plex, and C3 shop­ping com­plex.

“In the near fu­ture, fur­ther in­vest­ment will take place with the con­struc­tion of high-end apart­ment build­ings which are due to start in a few months. This will be lo­cat­ed be­tween UTT and the South­Park Shop­ping Com­plex,” he said. (SW)