The 'scared straight' concept
Minister of Youth Desmond Bannister said in the House of Assembly during the recent budget debate that the government envisions having a National Youth Program that is "truly national in scope." This program, he said, will encompass "all aspects of youth development" and will be designed to reach "young men and women in our society who can be helped before they get into trouble, so that they can lead productive lives and not become menaces to society."
There is no question that such a program can go a long way in addressing the serious crime problem that exists among segments of the youth in this country, as well as redirect the lives of youngsters who are vulnerable to the temptations of becoming criminals.
Shake-up at NIB
There are two ways to view the executive management shakeup at the National Insurance Board (NIB). On the one hand, it could be classified as a prudent business decision, if we are to believe the explanation given by NIB Director Algernon Cargill. On the other hand, in these tough economic times, the sending home of the five NIB executives – apparently not because it was a downsizing exercise for economic reasons, as Mr. Cargill indicated – could be regarded as a cruel and heartless thing to do.
In an official statement, Mr. Cargill said risk assessment studies "were conducted by two respected auditing firms with a Bahamian presence, and by an external firm."
A heart-wrenching story
Mary Rolle's story is a heart-wrenching one. Certainly, if Prime Minister Hubert Ingraham read the article in Monday's Nassau Guardian about the position Rolle now finds herself in as a result of his government's ill-advised decision to drastically cut funding for the National Youth Service Program that was based in North Andros, he would take immediate steps to restore full funding for that program.
According to The Guardian's article, the 42-year-old mother of five said the closure of the program left her feeling like a "motherless child." For the past three years, Rolle had worked as the assistant cook and kitchen help at the facility, but on Friday she received her last pay check as a result of the government's decision to cut funding for the program by 60 percent and relocate it from North Andros to New Providence.
Renewing government boards
Government boards are an opportunity for citizens to serve the country and advise officials, lending their talents and energy to the business of government in a unique manner.
These boards are examples of democratic vitality, with Bahamians participating in decisions affecting their fellow citizens. As the government gets set to reappoint a variety of boards we have a few observations and suggestions.
First World status begins in the mind
For years, there has been lots of talk about moving The Bahamas to the First World.
Although a more precise or definite concept of what really makes up the First World has yet to be described. But the move to a better economic, technological and social advancement may have something to do with it.
Making the case again for LNG
Reports out of Jamaica say that Prime Minister Bruce Golding's government has decided that liquefied natural gas (LNG) will be the fuel of choice for energy generation in Jamaica.
"Over time, therefore, natural gas will replace oil at power plants," The Jamaica Gleaner reported in a recent editorial. "Natural gas is cheaper, more efficient and, critically, environmentally cleaner than oil."
Container Port protest
Troy Garvey, president of the Eight Mile Rock High School (EMRHS) Parents Teachers Association, has become nationally prominent since he exposed the alleged sexual molestation of two male students at that school.
Over the past several months he has been ubiquitous, hopping around from press conference to press conference voicing his opinion on issues related to child abuse and crime in general. He has on occasions teamed up with the Rev. Glenroy Bethel, leader of the Grand Bahama-based activist group Families for Justice, to get his message across, and has done the same in New Providence with Bahamas Against Crime President Rev. C.B. Moss.
Illogical conclusion
It is impossible to understand the logic behind the conclusion by West End and Bimini Member of Parliament Obie Wilchcombe that a report commissioned by the Progressive Liberal Party (PLP) in the aftermath of its defeat in the May 2007 general elections is irrelevant because it is now two years old, as reported in The Nassau Guardian on Monday.
According to The Guardian, Wilchcombe reportedly believes that looking back does not serve the party moving forward. The clear inference here is that Wilchcombe does not think that the PLP should act on the recommendations made by the report, which was highly critical of PLP leader Perry Christie and cited his perceived weak leadership as the number one reason why the PLP lost the election.
Defining National Youth Service
There are some ideas many claim to understand, but which few actually do. One such idea is the national youth service (NYS), which the country should better define before moving ahead with new initiatives which bear the name, but have little resemblance to more authentic models of NYS.
In defining an idea, it's clarifying to acknowledge what it isn't. Efforts to rehabilitate non-violent juvenile offenders or provide alternative programs for school-age youth the public education system is unable "to handle" have been wrongly defined and mislabeled as national youth service.
Make it an annual event
Over the past several years, residents of Grand Bahama have become accustomed to the excitement of a major Junkanoo parade through the streets of downtown Freeport either on the Easter weekend or during a holiday weekend in the summer - thanks mainly to promoter and public relations executive Peter Adderley.
Whether under the promotional moniker of "Feel The Rush" or "Just Rush," the streets of Freeport came alive, and Grand Bahamians and visitors to the island got to thoroughly enjoy a performance of Junkanoo staged at a level almost as exciting as the major Junkanoo parades traditionally held in New Providence on Boxing Day and New Year's Day.
A tried and proven method
It is difficult to take a look at the current problems within the education system without admitting the worth of gender separated schools. The country's male student population is, sadly, severely lagging behind their female counterparts from as early as the primary level. Statistics show that nationally the academic performance of boys has been less than stellar compared to girls for many years.
A tried and proven method of getting better grades among male students in countries around the world has been the introduction of gender-segregated schools. It has long been accepted that males and females possess very different styles of learning, and the single-sex schools cater to this differentiation.
Public service promotions
Last October when Prime Minister Hubert Ingraham suggested that persons moving up the ranks in the Public Service should be promoted based on their abilities to perform rather than "paper qualifications," his remarks were fully endorsed by John Pinder, president of the Bahamas Public Services Union.
Like Pinder, we agree that it is "unfortunate that the public service only puts emphasis on qualifications when a person is being promoted," and that it is totally "unfair for persons who are capable of performing a particular task and who have been doing it for a number of years, and just because they lack one little subject or some paper qualifications, they are not able to be promoted to those positions."
Interesting observation
Bishop Neil Ellis, senior pastor at Mount Tabor Full Gospel Baptist Church, made a very interesting and factual observation during his annual state of affairs address at Mt. Tabor on Monday night when he said the Church could not win a referendum to keep gambling illegal for Bahamians and residents unless there is an internal effort within the Christian community to address the gambling habits of church members.
Despite the fact that he is one of the most prominent religious leaders in the country, Bishop Ellis is not one of those church leaders who have never missed an opportunity to voice strong opposition to any suggestion that the government should pass legislation to introduce a national lottery.
Some answers are needed
It was a horrific claim that stunned the nation. When the newspapers and the electronic media first reported the story of the death of a five-month-old baby girl who was believed to have been sexually molested, it was generally considered incredible that anyone in his or her right mind would have been capable of committing such a heinous act.
For more than a week the alleged horrible crime was the talk of the town, with calls for the death penalty to be reinstated for proper justice to be meted out to whomever was found guilty of this terrible crime. There were even suggestions that the death penalty was too mild a punishment for the "animal who did this to that defenseless little girl," as one irate gentleman said.
Create a Ministry of Tourism and Culture
With the extraordinary fall-off in public revenue, Prime Minister Ingraham may be considering a reduction in and rationalization of Government Ministries. We offer a modest suggestion in this regard.
Our recommendation is that the responsibilities of the Ministry of Youth, Sports and Culture be incorporated into other ministries, namely, Youth and Sports returning to Education, and Culture becoming a part of Tourism. As an aside, while Tourism should keep Aviation, it need not appear in its official name.
Who's helping to lift the recession?
When President Barack Obama became the United States' 44th president, it was right in the middle of a world global crisis and as a result there was the joke (especially among Afro-Americans) that it was not until things went into the toilet that they (the American people) decided to call in the "black man".
Depending on where you are, there may be some truth within the joke.
It's summer time
For children, there is nothing like the start of summer vacation. Just the thought of saying good-bye to classes, tests and constricting uniforms is usually enough to evoke the sheer joy of freedom in primary and high school students alike. Yet while the love of summer vacation may be a time-old tradition, the way those months are spent has changed drastically over the decades.
There once was a day that time off from school meant time spent with friends, when younger children would get filthy running around outside in yards or parks and teenagers would roam the island in groups, talking and laughing among themselves.
A dangerous trend
There is an overriding consensus that crime is one of the most serious problems facing the country today and it has been since the early 1980s when South American drug lords established a strong presence in these beautiful and once tranquil islands to facilitate the transport of illegal drugs into the United States.
Drug trafficking created somewhat of a subculture in the country, one in which even teenage pushers were able to make more money in one day that their parents collectively made in one week. Such easy access to big money also influenced some persons who were criminally inclined to do whatever was required of them by the drug lords, and as a result, the murder rate in The Bahamas escalated to a level that would have been considered unthinkable just a few years earlier.
Irresponsible sick-out
There can be no justification for the sick-out being staged by nurses employed by the Public Hospitals Authority (PHA) in New Providence and Grand Bahama.
On Monday, in an attempt to justify why more than 130 nurses in New Providence and 10 in Grand Bahama called in sick, Bahamas Nurses Union President Cleola Hamilton claimed that they were "just not feeling very well because of how they are being treated" by the government and warned that Monday's sick-out was just step one in a plan that will escalate if the government does not give the nurses greater assurances that they will receive their salary increases and health insurance benefits legally agreed to in their latest industrial agreement. The nurses apparently kept that promise yesterday as the sick-out continued on a large scale.
A good choice
With the exception of J. Richard Blankenship, who was U.S. ambassador to The Bahamas from December 2001 to July 2003, since becoming an independent nation in 1973, The Bahamas has been fortunate to have a number of excellent United States ambassadors who fully understood what their roles were as America's top diplomat in this country.
The chief criticism against Blankenship was that when speaking on certain matters, he had a penchant at times for redefining diplomacy, resulting in some Bahamians accusing him of interfering in the internal affairs of The Bahamas. But even in the case of Blankenship, there was never a question of whether his flawed brand of diplomacy would result in a strained relationship between The United States and The Bahamas.
Disgraceful behavior
The disgraceful behavior of Progressive Liberal Party (PLP) members in the House of Assembly last week should be condemned by all law-abiding Bahamians.
A vigilant political opposition is vitally important in countries where democracy flourishes, but by no stretch of the imagination can the blatant disregard that PLP members displayed for the authority of the speaker of the House in that august chamber on Wednesday be classified as them carrying out their duty to be vigilant; rather, it was the kind of behavior that more appropriately could be described as lawless.
Let's have a united Labour Day Parade
It is unfortunate that Obie Ferguson, president of the Trade Union Congress (TUC), declined to accept the invitation extended by John Pinder, president of the National Congress of Trade Unions (NCTU) for the two umbrella trade union organizations to unite for one major march on Labour Day this Friday.
In its report on a press conference held by Ferguson on Tuesday, The Nassau Guardian noted that the two umbrella trade union groups "have once again failed to settle their differences to unite for one march" and suggested that "whether or not they will ever again celebrate Labour Day as one organization still remains a mystery."
Hotel union's new leadership
Nicole Martin's landslide victory in last week's Bahamas Hotel Catering and Allied Workers Union (BHCAWU) presidential race and the election of an entirely new slate of officers to run the union for the next three years brought to an end the most tumultuous period in the history of the BHCAWU.
Under the presidency of Roy Colebrook, for more than two years an acrimonious internal dispute among the union's top executives made it virtually impossible for them to do the job they were elected to do: Look out for the welfare of the union's members, estimated at one time to be more than 7,000.
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