The Tribune

By DENISE MAYCOCK

Tribune Freeport Reporter

dmaycock@tribunemedia.net

THE Select Committee on Natural Resources hopes to begin holding public meetings as early as next month.

The group travelled to Grand Bahama on Tuesday for a three-day fact finding mission and is conducting meetings with environmental advocates, industry leaders, and businesspersons. Members are also viewing various sites of interest on the island, including Bahama Rock, and the Equinor oil spill in East Grand Bahama.

Grand Bahama is the second island that the committee has visited. The first was North Andros.

The committee is mandated to identify all the natural resources of the country and to investigate all matters related to natural resources. Funds derived from the country’s natural resources are to go to the Sovereign Wealth Fund for the benefit of the Bahamian people.

Chairman Michael Foulkes indicated that the members of the bipartisan committee, consisting of two members from the PLP, one independent MP, and four members from the governing party, are working well together.

“It bodes well for the committee and the Bahamian people because there is a lot of information out there,” he said.

Mr Foulkes stated that although the committee could be in Nassau to conduct these interviews and see documents, they “wanted to get on the ground as a committee and see the natural resources for ourselves and see them for the Bahamian people.”

After its Grand Bahama visit, the committee intends to visit Inagua, where salt is a big resource.

In addition to holding closed meetings, Mr Foulkes said the committee will soon hold public meetings with the people of the Bahamas.

He said the committee went to the House of Assembly for approval and hopes to start that next month.

“We got approval unanimously from the House of Assembly to give us the ability to have meetings where the media and the general public and persons can appear before the committee as witnesses and be a part of it.

“We are very excited about it; it is a very transparent process, and that is what we are doing,” Mr Foulkes added.

The committee submitted an interim report on December 16, and hopes to submit another interim report to update the public soon.

This comes after the group was granted its second extension to extend the life of the committee to September 1.

Mr Foulkes said that all members of the House of Assembly unanimously agreed to the extension that gives the committee another five months to complete its mission.

“We are very pleased about that because there is a lot of work to do and we are very serious about it,” he said.

“We have taken the solemn duty to find our natural resources and get as many facts as we can because this is a fact-finding committee. Our job is to get the facts and make recommendations to the House of Assembly.”

The committee was initially appointed from July to October 1 last year and previously received an extension to April 1.