The Tribune

EDITOR, The Tribune.

Recently, several prominent persons have suggested that “undocumented” persons be given the right to work for one year. Here are several thoughts about that idea.

The effects of Dorian has increased the numbers of three categories of unemployed persons in the Bahamas, citizens, holders of work permits or residents and illegals.

The challenge is that there are only a finite number of jobs available in New Providence and other family islands. The goodwill of family friends and neighbours will soon begin to wear thin.

Those displaced persons will want to have some privacy and a semblance of normalcy in their lives and those who may have saved some money will soon find their resources dwindling as they adjust to living in a new environment.

For these reasons, no Bahamians should not have to compete with the other two categories of unemployed persons to provide for their families in these challenging times.

In other words, putting Bahamians back to work must be a priority for the government at this time. A failure to do so must naturally create high levels of unemployment will only cause increases in crime as people try to survive.

While discretion must be used in order to minimise hardship to all parties, it is important that all illegal persons in the country must be repatriated to minimise job losses to Bahamians whose survival should be governments first priority.

Work permit holders who are not married to Bahamians should be placed on a shortlist based on their expertise and asked to return home. They should be given first preference to reapply for consideration at some point in the future. It should be obvious that the goodwill of donors will soon begin to wane and donations given thus far will only be diluted when shared with those impacted by the storm who remain in the country illegally.

Lastly, government revenues will fall dramatically in the short and medium term, and I would like to suggest they try something novel in order to raise additional revenue.

In fact, this is something that has probably never been done before; the indiscriminate consistent enforcement of the law.

It should be clear that many of the fines currently on the books are antiquated and should be increased for different categories of offences.

Fines for overstaying visits, drug possession, speeding, tinted windows, drinking while driving, killing in the course of dangerous driving, etc, must be increased.

To this end, it might help if police have at least one breathalyser to confirm drunk driving. It seems silly that a person can be ticketed for having an open alcoholic beverage, but levels of intoxication cannot be determined by the ticketing officer.

Outstanding monies owed to the government for student loans, property taxes, etc, should be collected, starting with current and former government officials. I suspect the funds that will flow into the public coffers will be in the multiplied millions.

The truth is, tax weary Bahamians cannot take additional tax increases at this time, make the lawbreakers pay their share!

JB

Nassau,

September 30, 2019.