By SENATOR
DION FOULKES
Dear Prime Minister,
The Scriptures remind us, "Whatever you do to the least of my brothers, that you do unto me." I appeal to you to reinstate the 80 terminated officers of the Urban Renewal Programme.
These men and mostly women are hard-working Bahamians with significant personal and family obligations. The majority are mothers and grandmothers who are the sole providers for their families.
It is unconscionable that your administration, which campaigned on the two central issues of crime / Urban Renewal and job creation, has fired trained Urban Renewal officers deliberately adding Bahamians to the unemployment line.
While you and your party spoke of putting Bahamians first, apparently that was just a slogan, as it is now clear that you never intended to do so.
These 80 Bahamians now find themselves in a precarious position where they are unable to pay mortgage or rent, car loans, school fees, and health care and utility bills, nor buy food and clothing for themselves and their children and other dependents. Some of them are taking care of an elderly parent.
Their tenuous position is exacerbated by the fact that the prospects of finding new employment are extremely difficult. In terms of employment, your government has begun not by adding jobs, but by firing Bahamians
That your government would fire all 42 of the Urban Renewal staff in Grand Bahama is particularly unconscionable given that island's even more severe economic challenges.
Mr Prime Minister, that same beach at Freeport, on which you alleged that unemployed Bahamians were sleeping, may now actually become a refuge for some of those fired and their household.
Shame on you.
I end with a quote from the late US president Franklin Delano Roosevelt, to which former Prime Minister Hubert A Ingraham often referred: "The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much, it is whether we provide enough for those who have little."
Comments
Lockhart 11 years, 10 months ago
Was this letter sent to PM Ingraham in 2007?
Bahamagyal 11 years, 10 months ago
Not Mr Christie's biggest fan either but the hypocrisy is sickening, Mr Foulkes couldnt open his mouth once to Mr Ingraham but here he is trying to advise Mr Christie how to run this country. I was hoping that he would have stayed on Darrold Miller's show a little while longer so he could respond to those callers who pointed out that the FNM did the same thing. But of course he ran off. Spare us Mr Foulkes!
JohnBrown 11 years, 10 months ago
Well it seems as though Mr Foulks is starting to reap what he has sown. Nevertheless, walking is allowed in this country, unless you are afraid to meet those within your secret order brotherhood, whom you might have attempted to belittle unconscionably, at high noon in the middle of Bay street. Ahhhhhhhhhhh beep beep! Those sad girls, sad girls, their such dirty bad girls...ah beep, beep
JohnBrown 11 years, 10 months ago
And may I say to you - one who has not missed many meals, and have in your own way contributed to this tit for tat butter for fat you kill my dog I'll kill your cat political and economic mess, while you have self-servingly fatten yourself at the expense of the masses, falsely believing that you were or are entitled to do so - might I demand that you share the wealth that you have amassed with the people, your people, that you stand as a bleeding heart for right now. Go to your bank account and give each of those 80 persons a thousand dollars to aid them in their greatest moment of despair or else shut up! Shut up! In the strongest terms, hut up! God has oooops up side your head as a warning in that car accident - and in that moment and a twinkling of an eye you could have been done - so get real and open up your heart, your bank accounts and own church and start taking from the rich and giving to them – the poor - their fair share of the contributions collected. Lucifer is watching…
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