The Tribune

WITH every cloud, there comes a silver lining – but what a cloud we’ve been living under.

The scale of the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic has been much talked about, but it’s when you see the actual numbers stacking up that it really comes into perspective.

In today’s Tribune Business section, we report that the losses suffered by the Nassau Airport Development Company (NAD) rose to $37.396m for the year to the end of June – an increase of more than eight-fold.

The previous losses were $4.449m. That’s a high loss on its own, you would think, but it is a tiny amount in comparison.

It doesn’t take a genius to see that those kind of losses are unsustainable in the long term, but they come because of one reason, and one reason alone – people stopped travelling.

The world shut down because of COVID. Even when restrictions started to lift, it became a gamble for tourists to take a trip with the possibility of new rules coming into place that might affect their trip.

Only recently, we have seen the new variant omicron bringing a shutdown of flights to a number of African countries as the world chose caution first.

So those are the dangers – and the losses that come with them.

But where is the silver lining?

Well, this Saturday the airport is ready for “numbers we’ve not seen for two years”, with 6,100 people expected to arrive in one day alone.

It’s been a long, tough road for the airport as it weathered increasing debts, but Vernice Walkine says that the rebound in traffic and tourism should be enough for it not to have to negotiate for a waiver over its debts.

It’s possibly even better yet, with Ms Walkine saying she is “almost afraid to say out loud” how strong passenger projections are in the near-term.

We hope for her sake, for the airport’s sake, for all our sakes that those projections turn out to be true.

Perhaps then we won’t be worrying about that cloud so much – but the sunshine that lies ahead.

Victimisation

I poke you in the eye, then you poke me in the eye. That’s almost how it feels hearing that the Department of Labour is now reviewing trade disputes related to 65 employees of Urban Renewal in Grand Bahama who were dismissed under the Minnis administration.

This comes hot on the heels of the FNM saying they might take legal action on behalf of those who have lost their jobs or had contracts cancelled by the Davis administration.

Can we expect another round again if the FNM gets back into power in five years?

Who is right? Who is wrong? Either way there is partisan finger-pointing, all while people’s jobs and lives are pulled this way and that in the middle.

Even aside from those involved, how can government ever expect to hire the best the country has to offer if there is a feeling that job might only last until the next administration comes in and then off you go.

As Gandhi is reported to have said, an eye for an eye will leave the whole world blind.