The Tribune

By SIMON

A good number of Bahamians have been pleased with the service received at the National Insurance Board (NIB) headquarters on Baillou Hill Road. This includes services such as renewing NIB cards, paying contributions, and receiving certain benefits.

There are other services, such as new disability benefits, which can take an inordinate amount of time to sort out. Still, a variety of basic services are handled proficiently by helpful and professional staff.

The good service at the headquarters stands in marked contrast to the dilapidated state of the building’s interior. The reception area is drab, rundown, and unsightly. It is not what the entrance of any public or private headquarters should look like.

Further into the interior, the public areas are decayed, ramshackle and broken-down, with doors needing to be replaced and grimy floors. A number of the office spaces on the ground floor are a disservice to employees who work in these conditions.

When the headquarters was erected, it was a modern building that improved and beautified the urban landscape in which it was built. It featured modern architecture and art.

Of historic significance it was built on the site of Jumbey Village, a cultural venue that was the brainchild of Edmund Moxey, a cultural creative, musician, and politician, who had an extraordinary vision for the preservation and promotion of various forms of cultural expression.

Moxey’s Jumbey Village and other community projects were part of his dream for the economic, social and cultural self-empowerment of Bahamians. Tragically, Jumbey Village was brutally destroyed out of political spite and indifference.

NIB headquarters is named the Clifford Darling Complex after the former Governor General. Born in Acklins, Sir Clifford trained as a barber and electrician. He moved to Nassau, later working on the Contract overseas.

As a taxi driver, he eventually became a union leader and general secretary and president of the Bahamas Taxicab Union. He played a leading role in the general strike of 1958. He helped broker an agreement between hotels and taxi operators and tour drivers.

He went into elected politics and was a fierce champion of labour and majority rule. He served in the Senate and House of Assembly, where he became speaker.

The Member of Parliament for Englerston for many years, Sir Clifford served as Minister of Labour and National Insurance. He helped to introduce the National Insurance programme.

Because of his tremendous contributions to national development, labor, and social security and equality, it was fitting that the NIB headquarters was named after Sir Clifford, a decent and likeable man well-regarded by many.

The board’s website notes: “Its primary mission was and is to provide income-replacement in respect of sickness, invalidity, maternity, retirement, death, industrial injury/disease, and involuntary loss of income.

“NIB’s added mission in the administration of the country’s social security programme, is to provide assistance for needy citizens and to assist with the social and infrastructural development of the country.”

Every Bahamian comes into contact frequently with NIB during their lifetime. This includes having to regularly visit one of its offices across the country. The board also has a large footprint, owning a large number of properties.

Why are the thousands of workers flowing through the headquarters every year treated to such a rundown space that successive governments have allowed to deteriorate? It shows a certain contempt and disrespect for the clients and employees of the board.

The broader mindset of course is the disregard for the maintenance of public buildings and public landscapes that has dogged us for decades. We have become used to squalid spaces.

This column has bemoaned the mindset of the owners of the largest grocery chain in the country, whose stores are in desperate need of remodelling and modernisation.

Many in the country believe that once a building is functional that there is no need to improve the aesthetics of a business place or public office. facility. It betrays a poverty of the imagination and a lack of regard for building and maintaining quality facilities including by those who are wealthy.

The Main Post Office downtown, which became structurally unsound and an eyesore, was eventually torn down. Reportedly, one of the civil servants involved in its construction said at the time that they were mostly looking to erect a functional structure.

They grey building, which resembled a Soviet Union-era drab and barren megastructure, had little aesthetic quality. The romanticised notion that the building should have been saved because it was finished after majority rule, is unconvincing nostalgia.

After failing to properly maintain the building, it was necessary to demolish it. This has given the country an opportunity to replace it was a structure and environs that are beautiful and imaginative, befitting a modern nation.

The now open site is atop an elevation. We should not erect another building that will be an eyesore. We should build for the future. Manty believe that a new Parliament should be built on that site.

A new Central Bank building was slated to be built on the site where the Royal Victoria Hotel stood. The new complex, with an impressive modern design, would have done wonders for downtown. Curiously, the current government cancelled the project with little explanation.

The last government finally tore down the ramshackle Churchill Building, which became another disgraceful eyesore. A new cabinet office is to be constructed in its place.

What is so missing in us that beauty and aesthetic qualities seem an adornment instead of a necessity? Why can’t rich grocery store owners fill the potholes in the parking lots of their chain? Why can’t governments keep green areas, verges and roundabouts maintained?

Why haven’t we been able to build a new Supreme Court complex, a new Parliament, a proper residence for the prime minister, and other structures of state?

In ancient Africa and the Americas, in Asian and European capitals, palaces, temples or cathedrals often dominated the city, reminding souls and subjects of their place in a cosmology that bound the sovereign powers of heaven and earth.

Paris’ architectural obsession is French culture and history, from the iconic Eiffel Tower, built to mark the centennial of the French Revolution, to the imposing Arc de Triomphe to the world-renowned Louvre.

A former teacher once noted: “Men come together in cities in order to live; they remain together in order to live the good life.” The teacher was Aristotle, who lived in an ancient city-state with a population about the size of the modern Bahamas.

He appreciated how the city might help to cultivate the “good life” and beauty and preserve and transmit virtues like civility and hospitality.

Those fountainheads of civilisation which socialise successive generations are rooted in the architecture, public spaces and the possibilities of a city and should inform its redevelopment.

Alas, we are comfortable with dilapidated mindsets and structures. We often do not see or ignore the decrepitude and the filth. A friend had to get his cesspit pumped recently because of the heavy rain.

He went to see what progress the two men pumping the cesspit were making. The stench was too much for him. But the men stood right over the open cesspit. He asked, “How y’all could stand that smell!” The response was telling and a partial answer to why so many public spaces and buildings are shabby.

“We used to it,” they shrugged!