The Tribune

By NEIL HARTNELL

Tribune Business Editor

nhartnell@tribunemedia.net

Long Island has had enough of “pie in the sky” promises, its chief councillor said yesterday, describing “appalling” health clinics and “hanging my head in shame” over the lack of tourist facilities.

Ian Knowles, addressing the Long Island Business Outlook conference, urged the Government to put “money, energy and force” behind efforts to address the island’s many infrastructure-related and other challenges rather than keep making promises that go unfulfilled.

In a frank account of the island’s many pressing woes, he described roads that were falling into disrepair; abandoned government buildings that were being consumed by “the bush” within five to ten years; a coastal landfill where waste was washed up to ten miles inland during hurricanes; and other accounts of general neglect and decay.

In particular, Mr Knowles said he was “appalled” at his visits last week to the two public health clinics in Deadman’s Cay and Simms, describing the equipment staff have to operate with as “obsolete and inadequate” and not fit for purpose in the 21st century.

The Deadman’s Cay morgue, he added, had been inoperable for ten years and now has “a roof ready to collapse”. This has left Long Island with a solitary morgue at Simms, capable of handling just three bodies at a time, and leaving open the possibility that bodies may have to be transported to Nassau if there is any overflow resulting from a COVID-19 outbreak.

The absence of quality healthcare meant islanders face having to pay $8,000-$10,000 to be air evacuated to Nassau in an emergency, Mr Knowles said, unless they had insurance. And the absence of an ambulance meant persons had to be transported to the clinics via truck or car on poorly conditioned roads.

Turning to the long-anticipated redevelopment of Deadman’s Cay airport into an international gateway to Long Island, the chief councillor said this had been a topic of discussion at all seven annual Business Outlook conferences held on the island to-date.

“The airport at Deadman’s Cay, especially the terminal building, is an international disgrace,” blasted Mr Knowles. “Anyone coming to Long Island out of Nassau or any Family Island nearby and looking at the state of that airport.... It’s incumbent that the Government does something about it.”

Voicing personal disappointment that the airport work had not already started, he added: “It hinders progress, it hinders travel. We’ve had so many complaints about that old, antiquated airport building there to the extent it’s almost null and void. It makes no sense using it.

“We’ve been having talks after talks, promises after promises, and nothing is done about it. All we’ve seen is a plan, nice 3D images and that’s waiting on someone’s desk to get approval.”

Adrian Gibson, Long Island’s MP, subsequently said he had been informed that the Minnis Cabinet had approved construction contracts for both the terminal and airside (runway) works before it was voted out of office on September 16. The Davis administration subsequently placed the Deadman’s Cay project and other Family Island airport public-private partnerships (PPPs) under review.

Elsewhere, Mr Knowles said “90 percent of” Long Island’s side roads are either in a stat of disrepair or need to be closed. And of 72 drainage well locations identified on the island, just two have been installed, leaving multiple areas prone to flooding once again in major hurricanes.

“All we’ve been hearing from Business Outlooks, time after time, is promises, promises and more promises,” the Long Island chief councillor said. “It’s always we’ll do it next year, we’ll do it after that, or we’ll do it after the next election.

“Me personally, as chief councillor, I’m tired of hearing about elections and promises. I have to go those roads along with many other persons in our communities. Those of you who live here feel it, know it on a daily basis.

“You might wonder why I’m so passionate about this this morning. We talk about this every Business Outlook. It seems that there’s a little piece of road that happened there, and after the next election another piece there.’

Mr Knowles said Long Island had been promised three new landfills “about 15-16 years ago” but none had materialised, and he described this pledge as “pie in the sky”. He added that the existing one in southern Long Island is “right on the water’s edge, and when there’s a high tide or a hurricane all the dump that’s in that moves all over within a ten-mile range”.

Turning to Dean’s Blue Hole, he added that would should have been a world-class attraction for the Crystal Serenity’s cruise passengers during the ship’s Bahamas home porting had turned out to be something less.

“There has to be proper access,” Mr Knowles added. “Even trying to get to the Blue Hole is challenging because the road is not paved, and there are no bathroom facilities. Can you imagine tourists coming off the cruise ship and wanting to visit the Blue Hole, but there are no bathrooms. When they ask where the bathroom is, I have to hang my head down in shame.”