Prime Minister Dr. Hubert Minnis said, in Parliament today, that no one is to blame for the spread of COVID-19 and no one should be blamed. This statement is in stark contrast to the utterances of the Minister of Tourism, who blamed the recent spread of the virus on Grand Bahama on Bahamians who travelled to Florida.
On Monday, Dionisio D’Aguilar vehemently insisted that the rise of COVID-19 cases in the country is not as a result of tourists entering the country, but rather due to Bahamians travelling abroad.
“Unfortunately, citizenry took advantage of their increased ability to travel and you will see that all of the cases are really domestic grown, and the foreign visitors have seemingly to date, not impacted us”, D’Aguilar asserted.
With regard to Bahamians travelling overseas, D’Aguilar should have made himself aware of the great incentives offered by the Government-Owned airline Bahamasair to Bahamians to travel to Florida. For example Bahamasair was offering travel from Nassau to Fort Lauderdale starting at $92 and Nassau to West Palm for as low as $80. At the same time, the “Special Offer” for travel from Nassau to Eleuthera started at $138.
I might add that these incentives were being offered at a time when in was a known fact Covid hotspot Florida’s coronavirus cases were soaring exponentially.
So on the one hand, you had the competent authority urging people not to travel outside of The Bahamas. On the other hand, you have a state-owned entity enticing and encouraging Bahamians to travel overseas. And yet as a three-handed monster, you have the Ministry of Tourism doing nothing to incentivize Bahamians to travel to the Family Islands.
In The Bahamas we have a saying when things don’t line up or make sense, that the left hand doesn’t know what the right hand is doing. In this case, not only does the left hand not know what the right hand is doing, but we have an abnormal middle hand which is just limp – doing nothing.
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