The Tribune

EDITOR, The Tribune.

I don’t know whether or not you’ve seen it but its hideous appearance was unavoidable, even for the visitors in this part of downtown. One day last week while making my trek up the library’s steps, a tourist with his family asked me, excuse me, pointing in the direction of the building. ‘What is that building? Oh, it used to be a magistrate’s court and as a policeman, I had given evidence there many times, but don’t know why we allow it to fall into this state of disrepair.

And then he did the unthinkable, he photographed it, directing his camera at a space or opening and the space of the light, convinced that that was history, went out to the world.

Editor, yes, but why do governments allow state owned buildings to reach the point of no return?

And to counteract this, spawning from our buildings’ demise, the solution then becomes the government’s leasing of privately owned buildings to house government departments, offices and ministries to the tune of hundreds of thousands of dollars, due monthly and bourne by the Public Treasury of the Bahamas, something is very wrong with this picture?

Here is a point that is directly akin, inextricably tied to this dereliction of duty and obvious disregard for the vital interest, the protection of Bahamian people’s purse, and therefore, when will enough be enough?

And, as is commonly applied a set of measurements, appropriately so, salaries earned, for work performed (proportionally, and/or commensurately to the effort, should be apportioned...and, therefore, one would expect that those salaries for the non performers, ought to be deducted?

Many Bahamians were of the view that it is past time for the parties in the public service and government to end, these were not the period in the lives of ordinary, struggling taken for granted country of people. Just, considering their daily grind, the efforts required to keep one’s head above water (inflation series at the grocery stores is stress enough).

And consequentially, the Bahamian taxpayers were still awaiting the easily verifiable proof, the evidence on the part of the PM Davis’ administration that it has tightened its spending belt, and sought to curtail and restrict all of the unnecessaries, in order to align itself with the hard economic times befalling, and I must be fair, not just the Bahamas, but the entire world, hastened to point out that the wealthiest of nations would be better able to absorb, stave off the blows to an appreciable degree, than some not so endowed.

In conclusion, matters of the past week it is hoped will have served as a stark warning of just how fragile the tourism product has become and cries, screamed for there to be a substitution, a cradling, and/or a replacement to the reliance so heavily on whether people come or don’t come, what then?

One of the reasons that countries have gone all out to empower its citizenry, so that many irons will be in the fire, not just one main engine operating and where you literally have little to no control over whether or not they come or not? Is there really no place to be as an entire people?

If the authorities don’t believe that that is significant, just consider the monthly salaries for the 20 thousand plus government workers? And there is no reason at all that the Bahamas ought not be able to weather the economic storm, no matter what was thrusted in our direction.

FRANK GILBERT

Nassau,

February 9, 2024.