The Tribune

EDITOR, The Tribune.

Greetings and thank you for allowing me this very small space in your daily newspaper to alert the reading public of this unfair practice by NIB regarding senior members of the public and what is being demanded, causing them to be physically challenged, is unacceptable, if I may?

I am a senior citizen having retired twenty years ago, after working for twenty-five years for law enforcement or the Royal Bahamas Police Force. Incidentally, I am an August born and, therefore, had to be verified early enough, so that the information reaches the accounts department in a timely fashion to be posted, etc. This created pressure for me and I wasn’t able to sleep Monday, 01/08/2022, worrying about having to get out early enough and with all of my Bahamas Government documentation in my possession.

As faith would have it, I arrived at NIB-Wulff Road a little after 10am and went to the security window to announce the reason for being there? I was then given a Retirement benefit form, like the one I filled in eleven months ago and compiled – then added my name to the listing, placing me next of five individuals. After an half hour the names of two Creole folk were called and they went in – up to- 1:30am I was still awaiting my name to be called. And guess what, people coming in were not from my country, wanting to do business with the Bahamas social assistance office, the lady in front of me, Creole and as I got up to leave the one seeking to assume my seat, you guessed it, Creole also. What am I saying?

There is no doubt that people are human beings and have rights in some places, but foreigners to my country and on the scale, I see them everywhere, on the jitney bus and on Saturday, trying to get a bus into downtown, a friend of mine catching the same bus, when she saw what was happening, said to me – keep quiet because we on the Haitian bus and see all of these Haitians riding the bus, that true, how did we get like this?

Editor, wherever I try to obtain service, usually I am either behind Haitian or Jamaican nationals - and the Jamaicans have no respect for their mouths, would curse you stink as we say in Bahamian slang - whatever is happening in those Caribbean countries, the Commonwealth of The Bahamas ought not to have picked up the tab when so many countries of the world have real money. The Bahamas has no money, our government has to borrow money to run the budget of our country. These countries can do better, they are just pulling us right down in the mud, like them - bit by bit and piece by piece but surely, evidently so.

I do not know what the Bahamas Department of Immigration is doing, but it seems to me that some believe that The Bahamas is for sale to the highest bidder? You just cannot have them a law enforcement arm of our national security, selling work permits in the same building where enforcement is taking place and the deportation section all mixed into the fray - is unacceptable.

FRANK GILBERT

Nassau,

August 2, 2022.