ST. VINCENT-Prime Minister says there is no change in time for the independence military parade.

KINGSTOWN, St. Vincent, CMC – Prime Minister Dr. Ralph Gonsalves said this year’s Independence Parade will take place as customary in the morning, despite a request by the parade commander to shift it to early evening because of the ongoing heatwave affecting St. Vincent and the Grenadines.

“I just want to say we have decided to keep the time for the parade at 8.00 a.m. (local time) on Independence Day. While the police made a plausible case for changing the time given the excessive heat over the last couple of weeks and would also be as predicted for the 27th, it is just too late to make the change for this year,” Prime Minister Gonsalves said.

On October 11, Gonsalves announced the proposed time change suggested by Superintendent of Police Benzil Samuel, adding that he would like people to give their opinions.

“We will have to consider persons to discuss it a little more fully, and it may not be changed at all but to give time for a fuller discussion, and as I say, it came by too late.

“People have already fixed up … have a program up in the North Windward area, the matter of the Madungo Festival, other people have activities which they have already arranged, diplomats coming on the evening of the 26th and want to leave on the evening of the 27th so that they can do the parade in the morning, diplomats from other countries,” Gonsalves told radio listeners.

“There are too many things for it to have been done in this hurried way. So, it is 8 a.m. as usual at Victoria Park for the parade,” he said, adding there may be consideration given by the police for the actual parade to be a little shorter.

“And I certainly, in my speech, have to make it as concise as possible in all the circumstances and to be mindful that people will be standing up very much in the heat and people on the parade ground.

“That’s always a consideration, but as much as the police have raised it given the extra heat at the moment with the weather, we need to pay even greater attention to those things,” Gonsalves added.

St. Vincent and the Grenadines gained political independence from Britain on October 27, 1979.