The Tribune

EDITOR, The Tribune.

A quick look at “About Nassau Container Port” lists all of the key dates and time frames of how shipping was relocated from the Downtown Waterfront to the Container Port. A key element of that move is identified following. 1990s-2011.

As commercial shipping increased in Nassau, more than 60% of all containers and 80% of all less-than-container-load (LCL) cargo are discharged on historic Bay Street — the balance at Arawak Cay. Over time, noise and exhaust pollution negatively impacted the beauty, charm and experience of Downtown Nassau.

It was a job well done, and provisions were made to ensure that the “noise and exhaust pollution that negatively impacted the beauty charm and experience of Downtown Nassau” would come to an end. Yes, the roadways and highways were provided so that container trucks did not have to foul the downtown and residential areas of the island, but just like rats and mice there are those that will cheat the system for their own profit and benefit.

And although the Government of The Bahamas has a stake in not only the Container Port and its success but indeed Downtown Nassau as well. Yet no Government has yet seen fit even to regulate and mandate that these godawful loud and polluting vehicles and their cheating operators do not drive through the heart of the City of Nassau. And without any law, nor any law enforcement, and with the acquiescence of their Supermarket Customers these road rats continue, not only to rumble through downtown, but roll all along East Bay Street and onto residential Eastern Road and Yamacraw Hill busting down whatever foliage they meet along the way.

These roads were never designed to support vehicles weighing twenty to thirty tons and the poor and cash strapped Water and Sewerage Corp is constantly having to dig up these roads as the freighters twist up their pipe joints and they start to leak. And all of this agro because of a single supermarket that allows this to happen, when they could quite easily insist that their trucking company should deliver via the highways that were built for that purpose. And the supermarket concerned is a BISX Listed public company. Maybe the shareholders should be asking questions about its Corporate Culture.

SUPER AGGRAVATED

Nassau,

April 29, 2021.