Jehovah's witnesses in NIB Battle
By KRYSTEL ROLLE ~ Guardian Staff Reporter ~ krystel@nasguard.com:
In a dispute that stretches back nearly two decades, the attorney representing a group of Jehovah's Witnesses made a final attempt yesterday to convince the Court of Appeal to overturn a Supreme Court decision which requires his clients to continue to make National Insurance contributions.
Attorney W. P. Cathcart, who represents Glen Alexander Colebrooke and the Christian Congregation of Jehovah's Witnesses of The Bahamas, laid out several reasons yesterday why the appellate court justices should do so.
The Jehovah's Witnesses are appealing the entire ruling of Justice Stephen Isaacs, who dismissed their application for a review of a National Insurance Board's (NIB) decision that requires 28 Witnesses to make the contributions for a small monthly stipend that they receive.
Members of the faith are not paid for service in the congregations, however, full-time branch workers like Colebrooke and traveling representatives get a modest monthly allowance.
NIB has said that this arrangement constitutes a contract of employment and the funds must be taxed. But the Witnesses said Colebrooke's duties at the branch were voluntary and that he should not be required to make the payments to the NIB fund because the money is a stipend, not a salary.
In September 2008, Isaacs ruled that there was no basis on which the court can grant the review. He said the Witnesses did not avail themselves of the appeal process to the Supreme Court as allowed by law. He noted that the appeal had to be launched on a question of law within 21 days after delivery of a decision by the Board, and a judicial review had to be launched within six months after that decision.
Isaacs noted then that NIB made the decision on January 27, 1992, that the ministers were employed persons and must pay contributions under the Act. Isaacs, in his judgment, noted that there was no appeal from that determination. However, he added that NIB should have allowed the Witnesses to be a part of the process. They were not told of the decision until after an NIB meeting had already convened.
On several occasions, the Witnesses, through their attorney, wrote NIB asking it to revisit the decision. However, on April 12, 2005 and again on February 16, 2006, NIB continued to reaffirm its original decision.
It wasn't until August 16, 2006 that the Witnesses sought leave to apply for a judicial review.
Isaacs said although the procedure for convening and conducting the hearing in 1992 was not strictly followed, the applicants stated in writing that they were not seeking a formal review.
In the Court of Appeal yesterday, Cathcart said the decision of NIB has to be an error. He said the Witnesses never entered into an employment contract with The Worldwide Order of Special Full-Time Servants of Jehovah's Witnesses. He also pointed out that the Witnesses are volunteers and have all taken a vow of poverty.
Court of Appeal President Dame Joan Sawyer said her difficulty with the matter is that while the Witnesses help the poor and perform other social services duties, the tax that they are now required to pay to the government is used to help the same type of people who they want to assist.
She also questioned whether NIB presented sufficient evidence to the court to make a proper determination.
She told attorney Harvey Tynes, who represents NIB, that he was not given all of the facts by the people who were directing him.
For instance, she said she does not know whether Baptist ministers or Mormons are made to pay taxes.
She said if a tax exemption for ministers is a constitutional norm, then it must be applied across the board.
Dame Joan said she is unsure how she will frame her judgment.
She wondered what effects her decision would have on society and the administration of justice.
She added that while it is not her job to mull over such issues, in a society that is as small as The Bahamas, justices have to think about the effects of their decisions.
In addition to Dame Joan, Justices Christopher Blackman and Stanley John presided over the case.
They reserved judgment in the case.
June 02, 2010
thenassauguardian
An International Caribbean Online Log about the news and opinions in the Americas and World. This Caribbean Blog of global reach and appeal is maintained by Bahamian Blogger - Dennis Dames with all readers and subscribers in mind.
Wednesday, June 2, 2010
Tuesday, June 1, 2010
International Maritime Organisation (IMO) team to assess Bahamas oil spill emergency plan
IMO team to assess Bahamas emergency plans for oil spill
By TANEKA THOMPSON
Tribune Staff Reporter
tthompson@tribunemedia.net:
EXPERTS from the International Maritime Organisation are in Nassau to liaise with the National Oil Spill Contingency Team to ensure that the Bahamas' emergency plans are adequate should the massive oil spill spreading in the Gulf of Mexico enter our waters.
Environment Minister Earl Deveaux said the two member IMO team will work with local officials until the week's end, assessing the Bahamas' risk of oil exposure and to provide expertise on crafting an oil spill response.
"They will quantify the potential risk of the oil coming ashore, assess our capacity, review the national contingency plan, review the bilateral and regional arrangement to identify where additional capacity is needed, and to provide technical advice and guidance on established practices related to oil spill response.
"They will also prepare a report for us and standby and assist us as the need arises," Mr Deveaux explained, adding that his ministry was currently reviewing an IMO report on conditions at Cay Sal where they searched for evidence of oil contamination.
Mr Deveaux said the report found no indication of oil in the Cay Sal area.
The experts, along with local environmental stakeholders, are expected to hold a press conference today to brief the media on emergency contingency plans related to the massive Gulf oil spill.
Meantime, international weather experts are anxiously watching the movement of the spill. Michael Stubbs, chief climatological officer at the Department of Meteorology, said so far favourable weather conditions have kept the spill near the Gulf of Mexico.
"We've been fortunate that the weather has been keeping the oil confined to its present location in the Gulf of Mexico. The wind patterns shifted slightly over the weekend which sort of raised some concerns, however the wind patterns have resumed their seasonal position which protects the shores of the Bahamas from surface oil and residue like tar balls."
Today marks the start of the 2010 Atlantic hurricane season - projected to be one of the most active seasons on record - and weather watchers are concerned that cyclones could exacerbate an already disastrous and unpredictable situation.
A hurricane or other storm system could stifle efforts in the Gulf to contain and clean up the oil. It could also generate strong waves or wind that would spread surface oil, oil residue or particles, and chemical disspersants into the area of the north-western Bahamas.
International reports indicate that BP will launch another attempt to plug the gushing oil well - triggered by an April 20 explosion of its Deepwater Horizon drilling rig which killed 11 workers - in the coming days after its recent try failed.
June 01, 2010
tribune242
By TANEKA THOMPSON
Tribune Staff Reporter
tthompson@tribunemedia.net:
EXPERTS from the International Maritime Organisation are in Nassau to liaise with the National Oil Spill Contingency Team to ensure that the Bahamas' emergency plans are adequate should the massive oil spill spreading in the Gulf of Mexico enter our waters.
Environment Minister Earl Deveaux said the two member IMO team will work with local officials until the week's end, assessing the Bahamas' risk of oil exposure and to provide expertise on crafting an oil spill response.
"They will quantify the potential risk of the oil coming ashore, assess our capacity, review the national contingency plan, review the bilateral and regional arrangement to identify where additional capacity is needed, and to provide technical advice and guidance on established practices related to oil spill response.
"They will also prepare a report for us and standby and assist us as the need arises," Mr Deveaux explained, adding that his ministry was currently reviewing an IMO report on conditions at Cay Sal where they searched for evidence of oil contamination.
Mr Deveaux said the report found no indication of oil in the Cay Sal area.
The experts, along with local environmental stakeholders, are expected to hold a press conference today to brief the media on emergency contingency plans related to the massive Gulf oil spill.
Meantime, international weather experts are anxiously watching the movement of the spill. Michael Stubbs, chief climatological officer at the Department of Meteorology, said so far favourable weather conditions have kept the spill near the Gulf of Mexico.
"We've been fortunate that the weather has been keeping the oil confined to its present location in the Gulf of Mexico. The wind patterns shifted slightly over the weekend which sort of raised some concerns, however the wind patterns have resumed their seasonal position which protects the shores of the Bahamas from surface oil and residue like tar balls."
Today marks the start of the 2010 Atlantic hurricane season - projected to be one of the most active seasons on record - and weather watchers are concerned that cyclones could exacerbate an already disastrous and unpredictable situation.
A hurricane or other storm system could stifle efforts in the Gulf to contain and clean up the oil. It could also generate strong waves or wind that would spread surface oil, oil residue or particles, and chemical disspersants into the area of the north-western Bahamas.
International reports indicate that BP will launch another attempt to plug the gushing oil well - triggered by an April 20 explosion of its Deepwater Horizon drilling rig which killed 11 workers - in the coming days after its recent try failed.
June 01, 2010
tribune242
Sunday, May 30, 2010
Haiti, a peon of international politics
By Jean H Charles:
This connotation seems gratuitous but a preponderance of evidence will convince the reader that indeed Haiti is the quintessential victim of misfeasance and malfeasance from the international community with “centuries of invasion, blackmail, plain robbery of Haiti’s natural resources and the impoverishment of its people”.
The latest manifestation of that malfeasance is happening today. Edmond Mulet, the United Nations representative in Haiti has decided to use the leverage and the prestige of that august body to embark upon the Preval government mulette (a mulette in French or Creole language is a donkey that provides the only means of transportation for rural Haiti) to mortgage the next generation of Haitian children into squalor and ill governance. We will come back to this latest manifestation of misfeasance but, it is imperative to start at the beginning to understand the extent of the wrong committed by governments on both sides of the Atlantic upon the people of Haiti.
I will not dwell into three hundred years of hard labor upon countless generations of Haitian people to produce the sugar, the coffee and the coco sold all over Europe by the French merchants who accumulated enormous wealth on the backbone of men and women who were not paid one cent for their sweat, their tears and their sorrow. Instead “they were hung up with their heads downward, crucified on planks, buried alive, crushed in mortars, forced to eat excrement, cast alive to be devoured by worms and mosquitoes.”
I will start instead with the gallantry of a Haitian Spartacus, the man Frederick Douglass described as the best black known and moving hero of the Western world, Toussaint Louverture. He transcended the weeping and the vexation to become the father of a nation that was hospitable to all, hospitable to the old white masters as well as the newly liberated slaves. He wrote to Napoleon as a black emperor to the white emperor suggesting the building of a French Commonwealth in Haiti akin to the British Commonwealth that we have today, with a semi-autonomous Haiti that would respect the human rights of all the citizens within its territory.
The answer to Toussaint Louverture was an army of some 10.000 French soldiers, facilitated by a grant of $750,000 by the newly elected American President Thomas Jefferson, to re-establish slavery in Haiti. The protracted war and the destruction in infrastructure and in physical assets that followed set Haiti back to a scorched land as it won its independence from France in 1804. Some 100.000 lives were lost during the struggle.
To add insult to injury, Charles X demanded and exacted from the second and the third President of Haiti, Alexander Petion and Jean Pierre Boyer a debt of independence amounting to some 21 billion dollars in today’s money. It was not enough that their forefathers have labored for three centuries without pay; it was not enough they have won their freedom through their own bravura they must pay the planters for the slaves who were their prized possession.
To ensure that the odious contract was signed, French diplomacy took an active part in facilitating the secession of the country. Henry Christophe would have nothing to do with such stipulation; as such, he was denied the authority to rule over the entire country. The culture of acting patriotically internally while plotting externally with foreign powers for the spoils of the country has became the staple of successive Haitian governments until today under the Preval governance.
Haiti’s tradition of service and hospitality to liberators was greeted with a cold reception not a thank you by the same freedom fighters. Miranda and Bolivia received arms, food, and support from Alexander Petion on his way to liberate Venezuela, Bolivia, and Columbia from slavery. Yet at the first international meeting of Latin American States, Haiti was an uninvited guest. Even the Vatican, the pillar of moral authority, refused to recognize as well as sending educators to Haiti.
To repay the French debt, Haiti without financial resources had to borrow money at usurious rate on the French and the American market to meet that obligation. The country has been the theatre of international intrigues by the German, the Dutch and, of course, the French, who armed one faction against the other to ensure that peace and development was never on the agenda. Finally, to repay the First National Bank, the directors convinced the American government to invade Haiti and seize its custom entries as a guaranty for the unpaid debt.
I will quote J Michael Dash an expert on Haiti customs and culture to describe the outcome of the American occupation: ‘perhaps the greatest single lasting effect of the occupation was the centralization of state power in Port au Prince, the ostracism of the peasantry and the elite divided by class and color rivalry.’
We are living today the consequences of these policies adopted during the occupation. There was a fleeting moment of peace and prosperity during the Paul Magloire presidency during the Eisenhower administration in the 1950s. Magloire committed the mistake of trying to remain in power beyond his mandate as Rene Preval is trying to do now, extending his term beyond February 7, 2011. Magloire was forced into exile and the country has been in convulsion since.
The Duvalier father and sons maintained their criminal grip on the throats of the Haitian people for thirty years with the overt support of the American government under the pretext that they were a bulwark against communism in the region.
The Haitian people’s liberation day of February 7, 1986 was of a short stay. The populism of Jean Bertrand Aristide and Rene Preval that followed the militarism of Henry Namphy was concocted in Washington at the White House and in New York at the United Nations.
I was at the meeting at the White House when the Clinton Administration designed the Haitian plan in the 1990s; such a plan destroyed the Haitian rice industry. To my suggestion that Haiti should engage in its natural agricultural vocation, the answer was swift and unequivocal. ‘Agriculture is for Mexico, Haiti is for small assembly industries’. I was again at the White House lobbying for the withdrawal of the embargo against the country. The answer was a stronger embargo, causing major destruction to the flora for future generations.
The international community in spite of its outpouring of financial support (10 billion dollars) after the devastating earthquake of January 12, 2010 is charting a dangerous course for Haiti’s rebuilding. With the Strategic Plan of National Recovery (PSSN) an elite group of intellectuals from the Diaspora and the motherland has labored in Santo Domingo to chart a course to rebuild Haiti. Yet through sheer arrogance bordering hubris, neither the Haitian government nor the international community has called upon this select group to share their findings with and incorporate their vision into the making of the new rebuilt Haiti.
The political parties, the civil society, the intellectual elite, the political candidates, the masses have all been united in refusing to go to the polls under the Preval government. The streets of the cities are rumbling with protest. All his elections have been flawed, stolen and disfranchised. He is inimical to the concept of political mouvemance. His claim that he wants to deliver power to an elected president is as hollow and shallow as his ten years of governance. In fact, the only time there was a minimum of decent standard of free and fair elections in recent times in Haiti, was during a transitional government. The transition of Ertha Trouillot produced a free election that gave the power to Arisitide, and the transition of Latortue organized the election leading Preval into power.
As president, Preval has exhibited a glaring indifference to the needs of, and the solutions to the problems haunting the Haitian people. He has never visited Cape Haitian, the second city of the Republic of Haiti. He would have seen an historical city that has sunk into decrepit and physical decay due to lack of public hygiene, population pressure and no minimum care from the national government. With the hurricane and the rainy season on the horizon, countless lives will be destroyed. The camps are a fetid hotpodge of physical and psychological no man’s land, where the unnatural is happening: mothers throwing their children into the garbage because they are so overwhelmed and so despondent.
The United Nations is now the new oppressing force in Haiti, the enforcer behind which the western powers are hiding to continue the malicious practice of doing wrong to Haiti. Having lost some three hundred members, I would like to believe sharing this thought of Frederic Douglass that sharing in common a terrible calamity and this touch of nature would have made us more than countrymen, it made us kin.
This election is a breaking point to change the practice of treating the majority of Haitian people as peons. Handing the baton to Preval to conduct the presidential and the legislative elections will seal Haiti into a life of squalor and ill governance that has been its lot for the past fifty years. It will, as said Andrew Flold, condemn future generations of Haitians to remain enslaved by poverty and desperation.
The United Nations’ credibility is at stake these days. A recent news report has indicated that a major drug dealer, who is consolidating Guinea Bissau as a hub for drug transshipment, has found refuge in the United Nations compound, where he has plotted his next move into power. Facilitating the status quo in Haiti after fifty years of ill governance with a government that has little interest in and little concern for the Haitian people is detrimental to the very essence of what the United Nations should stand for.
Some two years ago, the Haitian people have tried to storm the Haitian palace to force Preval to resign, because they were hungry while the food was rotting at the port. The UN occupation forces repelled the assailants. The critical mass of Haitian people revolting this time might be too large for any UN forces to contain!
I am seeing at the horizon the debacle that happen in Saigon/Hanoi some sixty years ago! History is unfolding in front of our very eyes. Stay tuned!
May 29, 2010
caribbeannetnews
This connotation seems gratuitous but a preponderance of evidence will convince the reader that indeed Haiti is the quintessential victim of misfeasance and malfeasance from the international community with “centuries of invasion, blackmail, plain robbery of Haiti’s natural resources and the impoverishment of its people”.
The latest manifestation of that malfeasance is happening today. Edmond Mulet, the United Nations representative in Haiti has decided to use the leverage and the prestige of that august body to embark upon the Preval government mulette (a mulette in French or Creole language is a donkey that provides the only means of transportation for rural Haiti) to mortgage the next generation of Haitian children into squalor and ill governance. We will come back to this latest manifestation of misfeasance but, it is imperative to start at the beginning to understand the extent of the wrong committed by governments on both sides of the Atlantic upon the people of Haiti. I will not dwell into three hundred years of hard labor upon countless generations of Haitian people to produce the sugar, the coffee and the coco sold all over Europe by the French merchants who accumulated enormous wealth on the backbone of men and women who were not paid one cent for their sweat, their tears and their sorrow. Instead “they were hung up with their heads downward, crucified on planks, buried alive, crushed in mortars, forced to eat excrement, cast alive to be devoured by worms and mosquitoes.”
I will start instead with the gallantry of a Haitian Spartacus, the man Frederick Douglass described as the best black known and moving hero of the Western world, Toussaint Louverture. He transcended the weeping and the vexation to become the father of a nation that was hospitable to all, hospitable to the old white masters as well as the newly liberated slaves. He wrote to Napoleon as a black emperor to the white emperor suggesting the building of a French Commonwealth in Haiti akin to the British Commonwealth that we have today, with a semi-autonomous Haiti that would respect the human rights of all the citizens within its territory.
The answer to Toussaint Louverture was an army of some 10.000 French soldiers, facilitated by a grant of $750,000 by the newly elected American President Thomas Jefferson, to re-establish slavery in Haiti. The protracted war and the destruction in infrastructure and in physical assets that followed set Haiti back to a scorched land as it won its independence from France in 1804. Some 100.000 lives were lost during the struggle.
To add insult to injury, Charles X demanded and exacted from the second and the third President of Haiti, Alexander Petion and Jean Pierre Boyer a debt of independence amounting to some 21 billion dollars in today’s money. It was not enough that their forefathers have labored for three centuries without pay; it was not enough they have won their freedom through their own bravura they must pay the planters for the slaves who were their prized possession.
To ensure that the odious contract was signed, French diplomacy took an active part in facilitating the secession of the country. Henry Christophe would have nothing to do with such stipulation; as such, he was denied the authority to rule over the entire country. The culture of acting patriotically internally while plotting externally with foreign powers for the spoils of the country has became the staple of successive Haitian governments until today under the Preval governance.
Haiti’s tradition of service and hospitality to liberators was greeted with a cold reception not a thank you by the same freedom fighters. Miranda and Bolivia received arms, food, and support from Alexander Petion on his way to liberate Venezuela, Bolivia, and Columbia from slavery. Yet at the first international meeting of Latin American States, Haiti was an uninvited guest. Even the Vatican, the pillar of moral authority, refused to recognize as well as sending educators to Haiti.
To repay the French debt, Haiti without financial resources had to borrow money at usurious rate on the French and the American market to meet that obligation. The country has been the theatre of international intrigues by the German, the Dutch and, of course, the French, who armed one faction against the other to ensure that peace and development was never on the agenda. Finally, to repay the First National Bank, the directors convinced the American government to invade Haiti and seize its custom entries as a guaranty for the unpaid debt.
I will quote J Michael Dash an expert on Haiti customs and culture to describe the outcome of the American occupation: ‘perhaps the greatest single lasting effect of the occupation was the centralization of state power in Port au Prince, the ostracism of the peasantry and the elite divided by class and color rivalry.’
We are living today the consequences of these policies adopted during the occupation. There was a fleeting moment of peace and prosperity during the Paul Magloire presidency during the Eisenhower administration in the 1950s. Magloire committed the mistake of trying to remain in power beyond his mandate as Rene Preval is trying to do now, extending his term beyond February 7, 2011. Magloire was forced into exile and the country has been in convulsion since.
The Duvalier father and sons maintained their criminal grip on the throats of the Haitian people for thirty years with the overt support of the American government under the pretext that they were a bulwark against communism in the region.
The Haitian people’s liberation day of February 7, 1986 was of a short stay. The populism of Jean Bertrand Aristide and Rene Preval that followed the militarism of Henry Namphy was concocted in Washington at the White House and in New York at the United Nations.
I was at the meeting at the White House when the Clinton Administration designed the Haitian plan in the 1990s; such a plan destroyed the Haitian rice industry. To my suggestion that Haiti should engage in its natural agricultural vocation, the answer was swift and unequivocal. ‘Agriculture is for Mexico, Haiti is for small assembly industries’. I was again at the White House lobbying for the withdrawal of the embargo against the country. The answer was a stronger embargo, causing major destruction to the flora for future generations.
The international community in spite of its outpouring of financial support (10 billion dollars) after the devastating earthquake of January 12, 2010 is charting a dangerous course for Haiti’s rebuilding. With the Strategic Plan of National Recovery (PSSN) an elite group of intellectuals from the Diaspora and the motherland has labored in Santo Domingo to chart a course to rebuild Haiti. Yet through sheer arrogance bordering hubris, neither the Haitian government nor the international community has called upon this select group to share their findings with and incorporate their vision into the making of the new rebuilt Haiti.
The political parties, the civil society, the intellectual elite, the political candidates, the masses have all been united in refusing to go to the polls under the Preval government. The streets of the cities are rumbling with protest. All his elections have been flawed, stolen and disfranchised. He is inimical to the concept of political mouvemance. His claim that he wants to deliver power to an elected president is as hollow and shallow as his ten years of governance. In fact, the only time there was a minimum of decent standard of free and fair elections in recent times in Haiti, was during a transitional government. The transition of Ertha Trouillot produced a free election that gave the power to Arisitide, and the transition of Latortue organized the election leading Preval into power.
As president, Preval has exhibited a glaring indifference to the needs of, and the solutions to the problems haunting the Haitian people. He has never visited Cape Haitian, the second city of the Republic of Haiti. He would have seen an historical city that has sunk into decrepit and physical decay due to lack of public hygiene, population pressure and no minimum care from the national government. With the hurricane and the rainy season on the horizon, countless lives will be destroyed. The camps are a fetid hotpodge of physical and psychological no man’s land, where the unnatural is happening: mothers throwing their children into the garbage because they are so overwhelmed and so despondent.
The United Nations is now the new oppressing force in Haiti, the enforcer behind which the western powers are hiding to continue the malicious practice of doing wrong to Haiti. Having lost some three hundred members, I would like to believe sharing this thought of Frederic Douglass that sharing in common a terrible calamity and this touch of nature would have made us more than countrymen, it made us kin.
This election is a breaking point to change the practice of treating the majority of Haitian people as peons. Handing the baton to Preval to conduct the presidential and the legislative elections will seal Haiti into a life of squalor and ill governance that has been its lot for the past fifty years. It will, as said Andrew Flold, condemn future generations of Haitians to remain enslaved by poverty and desperation.
The United Nations’ credibility is at stake these days. A recent news report has indicated that a major drug dealer, who is consolidating Guinea Bissau as a hub for drug transshipment, has found refuge in the United Nations compound, where he has plotted his next move into power. Facilitating the status quo in Haiti after fifty years of ill governance with a government that has little interest in and little concern for the Haitian people is detrimental to the very essence of what the United Nations should stand for.
Some two years ago, the Haitian people have tried to storm the Haitian palace to force Preval to resign, because they were hungry while the food was rotting at the port. The UN occupation forces repelled the assailants. The critical mass of Haitian people revolting this time might be too large for any UN forces to contain!
I am seeing at the horizon the debacle that happen in Saigon/Hanoi some sixty years ago! History is unfolding in front of our very eyes. Stay tuned!
May 29, 2010
caribbeannetnews
Saturday, May 29, 2010
...fears that the massive BP oil spill will reach Cuba and wreak havoc on an island still relatively untouched by modernity's environmental ills
Fearful Cuba watches, waits for BP oil spill
By Jeff Franks:
HAVANA, Cuba (Reuters) -- Red flags went up on beaches in western Cuban this week, closing them briefly to swimmers amid rumors that the BP oil spill in the US part of the Gulf of Mexico was forcing sharks into Cuban waters.
The government, through state-run press, quickly denounced the rumors as false and the beaches were reopened, but the incident reflected fears that the massive spill will reach Cuba and wreak havoc on an island still relatively untouched by modernity's environmental ills.
"Cuba, like all the countries in this area, is worried about the situation in the Gulf," said Osmani Borrego Fernandez, a director at the Guanahacabibes National Park at Cuba's western tip.
So far, he said, there has been no evidence of the oil, but "we are alert."
A trip along Cuba's coastline is like a trip back in time where vast stretches of palm-fringed beaches sit undeveloped and sea life abounds in the crystalline waters.
While rampant development and overfishing have damaged coastlines and depleted seas around the world, communist-led Cuba has been largely preserved by its slow economic pace.
As a result, scientists and environmentalists view Cuban waters as a place where they can see how the world's oceans were decades ago.
"Many areas along the coast, and thousands of small keys, are in rural areas or are remote and have simply been left alone," said Dan Whittle, senior attorney at the Environmental Defense Fund.
"Ernest Hemingway set up a fish camp on Cayo Paraiso (about 90 miles west of Havana) in the 1940s and the area has not really changed since then. If he were still alive, he'd still recognize it today," he said of the US writer who lived in Cuba for two decades.
Cuba's northwest coast is considered most in danger from the oil. It is there that coral reefs, seagrass beds and mangroves provide major breeding grounds for many fish and sea creatures, including endangered migratory species like sea turtles, sharks and manatees, Whittle said.
All that is at stake if the BP oil finds its way to Cuba. It could also damage Cuba's tourism industry, which is centered on beaches and to a lesser degree eco-tourism.
Tourism brought in more than $2 billion to Cuba last year, or about 20 percent of Cuban's foreign exchange income.
The good news for Cuba is that the spill is still centered about 300 miles northwest of the island and BP may finally be gaining control over the massive leak.
Officials for the oil giant said on Friday their so-called "top kill" solution of plugging the gusher by pumping in "drilling mud" was showing signs of success.
But even if that happens soon, Cuban officials are concerned that the oil already in the water could be swept south by gulf currents.
Cuba is separated from the Florida Keys by just 90 miles of water and despite their disparate political histories, the United States and Cuba are inextricably linked ecologically.
Another rumor that supposedly contributed to the Cuban beach closures this week was that lionfish, which have venomous spikes and have invaded Cuban waters in recent years from Florida, were poisoning swimmers. The government said that rumor also was false.
The United States and Cuba have been at odds since Fidel Castro took power in a 1959 revolution, but they held talks last week about the oil slick, officials said.
Cuba expert Wayne Smith at the Center for International Policy think tank in Washington said he met with Cuban authorities this week in Havana and that they are "fully open" to cooperation with the Americans to stop the oil.
Standing in the way is the longstanding US trade embargo against Cuba, which prevents the use of much US technology in Cuba.
At a conference this week in Washington, oil experts and environmentalists said it was time to allow cooperation with Cuba in oil safety practices.
"We are not talking about a transfer of technology. All we are asking is that, if there is an accident, the Cubans can pick up the phone and call American experts who can bring resources within 24 hours," said oil expert Jorge Pinon.
The issue is becoming a bigger one as Spanish oil giant Repsol prepares to drill for oil off Cuba's ecologically rich northwest coast perhaps later this year. It has contracted for use of an Italian-owned drilling rig now being completed in China.
While the spill is a disaster, it might have one positive result, Smith said.
"It actually could help improve (US-Cuba) relations if we cooperate in the right way and we have the right attitude," he said.
May 29, 2010
caribbeannetnews
By Jeff Franks:
HAVANA, Cuba (Reuters) -- Red flags went up on beaches in western Cuban this week, closing them briefly to swimmers amid rumors that the BP oil spill in the US part of the Gulf of Mexico was forcing sharks into Cuban waters.
The government, through state-run press, quickly denounced the rumors as false and the beaches were reopened, but the incident reflected fears that the massive spill will reach Cuba and wreak havoc on an island still relatively untouched by modernity's environmental ills.
"Cuba, like all the countries in this area, is worried about the situation in the Gulf," said Osmani Borrego Fernandez, a director at the Guanahacabibes National Park at Cuba's western tip.
So far, he said, there has been no evidence of the oil, but "we are alert."
A trip along Cuba's coastline is like a trip back in time where vast stretches of palm-fringed beaches sit undeveloped and sea life abounds in the crystalline waters.
While rampant development and overfishing have damaged coastlines and depleted seas around the world, communist-led Cuba has been largely preserved by its slow economic pace.
As a result, scientists and environmentalists view Cuban waters as a place where they can see how the world's oceans were decades ago.
"Many areas along the coast, and thousands of small keys, are in rural areas or are remote and have simply been left alone," said Dan Whittle, senior attorney at the Environmental Defense Fund.
"Ernest Hemingway set up a fish camp on Cayo Paraiso (about 90 miles west of Havana) in the 1940s and the area has not really changed since then. If he were still alive, he'd still recognize it today," he said of the US writer who lived in Cuba for two decades.
Cuba's northwest coast is considered most in danger from the oil. It is there that coral reefs, seagrass beds and mangroves provide major breeding grounds for many fish and sea creatures, including endangered migratory species like sea turtles, sharks and manatees, Whittle said.
All that is at stake if the BP oil finds its way to Cuba. It could also damage Cuba's tourism industry, which is centered on beaches and to a lesser degree eco-tourism.
Tourism brought in more than $2 billion to Cuba last year, or about 20 percent of Cuban's foreign exchange income.
The good news for Cuba is that the spill is still centered about 300 miles northwest of the island and BP may finally be gaining control over the massive leak.
Officials for the oil giant said on Friday their so-called "top kill" solution of plugging the gusher by pumping in "drilling mud" was showing signs of success.
But even if that happens soon, Cuban officials are concerned that the oil already in the water could be swept south by gulf currents.
Cuba is separated from the Florida Keys by just 90 miles of water and despite their disparate political histories, the United States and Cuba are inextricably linked ecologically.
Another rumor that supposedly contributed to the Cuban beach closures this week was that lionfish, which have venomous spikes and have invaded Cuban waters in recent years from Florida, were poisoning swimmers. The government said that rumor also was false.
The United States and Cuba have been at odds since Fidel Castro took power in a 1959 revolution, but they held talks last week about the oil slick, officials said.
Cuba expert Wayne Smith at the Center for International Policy think tank in Washington said he met with Cuban authorities this week in Havana and that they are "fully open" to cooperation with the Americans to stop the oil.
Standing in the way is the longstanding US trade embargo against Cuba, which prevents the use of much US technology in Cuba.
At a conference this week in Washington, oil experts and environmentalists said it was time to allow cooperation with Cuba in oil safety practices.
"We are not talking about a transfer of technology. All we are asking is that, if there is an accident, the Cubans can pick up the phone and call American experts who can bring resources within 24 hours," said oil expert Jorge Pinon.
The issue is becoming a bigger one as Spanish oil giant Repsol prepares to drill for oil off Cuba's ecologically rich northwest coast perhaps later this year. It has contracted for use of an Italian-owned drilling rig now being completed in China.
While the spill is a disaster, it might have one positive result, Smith said.
"It actually could help improve (US-Cuba) relations if we cooperate in the right way and we have the right attitude," he said.
May 29, 2010
caribbeannetnews
Friday, May 28, 2010
Jamaica's business is the Caribbean's business
By Sir Ronald Sanders:
The widely publicised bloody clashes over the last few days between law enforcement agencies and armed gangs in Jamaica are as bad for the economic and social well-being of the people of Caribbean countries as they are for Jamaicans.
While the members of the Caribbean Community and Common Market (CARICOM) see themselves as a “Community of Independent Sovereign States”, most of the rest of the world regard them as one area. Only the most knowledgeable make a distinction between them. So, events in Jamaica impact all other CARICOM countries whether they like it or not.
In meaningful terms, therefore, Jamaica’s business is CARICOM’s business. Neither CARICOM governments nor the people of CARICOM can sit back and pretend that events in Jamaica in which criminals defy the authority of the State are not relevant to them. CARICOM countries are tied together and none can deny cross-border relationships in trade, investment and people.
Jamaica is the biggest of the CARICOM countries in population terms and it impresses and influences the world far more than other CARICOM countries. Of course, the impression and influence have been both beneficial and inimical to Jamaica and the wider region.
On the positive side, the vibrant music of Jamaica and its musicians, led by the iconic Bob Marley, have clearly given Jamaica global recognition. So too have its holiday resorts which are playgrounds for tourists from all over Europe and North America. Jamaican agricultural products, such as its Blue Mountain Coffee, and many of its manufactured goods have been able to penetrate foreign markets more deeply than those from other regional countries.
And, CARICOM’s negotiations with large countries and groups of countries would be much weaker and far less effective without the participation of Jamaica. Its relatively large population of close to three million people makes Jamaica a more attractive market than the majority of CARICOM countries which, with the exception of Trinidad and Tobago, each number less than a million people. Because of the size of its population, even with the limitations of educational opportunities, Jamaica also has more qualified technical people for bargaining internationally than its partner countries in CARICOM. Therefore, the participation of Jamaican negotiators in CARICOM teams is extremely valuable.
Jamaicans also constitute the largest number of the West Indian Diaspora in the United Kingdom, the United States and Canada. To the extent that the West Indian Diaspora is a group whose votes are wooed by political parties in these countries, much is owed to Jamaicans for the attention paid to Caribbean concerns.
On the negative side, Jamaica’s internal crime, and organised crime that its gangs have exported to Britain, Canada and the United States have created an unwholesome image for the country and severely damaged it economically. In the process, CARICOM has been weakened economically as well, for an economically weak Jamaica is unable to serve as a dynamo for economic activity and growth throughout the area.
Jamaica’s high crime level has been bad for business and bad for its economy. A 2003 study found that the total costs of crime came to J$12.4 billion which was 3.7% of GDP, and a 2007 UN report projected that if Jamaica could reduce violent crime to Costa Rica’s low level, the economy would grow by 5.4%. In a World Bank survey, 39% of Jamaica’s business managers said they were less likely to expand their businesses because of crime, and 37% reported that crime discourages investment that would have encouraged greater productivity.
Apart from scaring away investment, high crime in Jamaica has also caused many of its professionals and middle-class families to flee the country seeking safer environments abroad. More than 80 per cent of Jamaica’s tertiary educated people have migrated to the world’s industrialized nations.
It doesn’t take much imagination to work out how much more socially and economically developed Jamaica would have been today had it not been plagued by over 30 years of escalating crime and its debilitating consequences.
From time to time, outbursts of violent crime have affected the country’s tourism which contributes about 10 per cent of the country’s GDP. It is only because of expensive and extensive advertising and public relations campaigns in the main tourist markets that Jamaica has managed to keep its tourism arrivals by air fairly stable.
This latest, globally-publicized, bloody confrontation between security forces and criminal gangs protecting a Drugs Don, Christopher “Dudus” Coke, from being served with an order for extradition to the United States and arrested, will damage the tourism industry harshly, and, again, once it is over, Jamaica will be forced to spend large sums repairing its image and assuring tourists of its safety.
Other CARICOM countries will not be immune from the Jamaica disturbances. On the basis that tourists see the Caribbean as one place, other Caribbean destinations will also have to spend more on promoting themselves.
The fact that “Dudus” could be protected by well-armed, criminal gangs who have neither respect for, nor fear of, Jamaica’s security forces or the authority of the State, is a direct consequence of governance gone badly wrong. From the mid-1970s the two main political parties in Jamaica, the Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) and the Peoples National Party (PNP) have formed alliances with gangs that have been well-armed and in many cases are involved in the drugs trade. Having taken that step that renders politicians beholden to criminals, the political hierarchy began an inexorable downward spiral to disaster.
In effect, part of the State has been captured by leaders of criminal gangs to whom political parties are obligated. Nothing else but this sense of obligation to “Dudus” Coke can explain why Jamaica’s Prime Minister Bruce Golding, as Leader of the JLP, would have intervened at party level to influence a law enforcement matter between his government and the government of the US.
The Jamaican government now has to assert the authority of the State over “Dudus” and his gang, and it must be done if Jamaica is to be freed from the captivity of criminal gangs.
And, when this particular confrontation is over, Jamaica must start the gruelling process of openly and transparently dismantling all party political connections with gangs, reasserting the supremacy of the State, and weeding out gangs that are the scourge of the society. Any alternative scenario is too terrifying to contemplate but it does include Jamaica being plunged into the status of a failed State.
This is why it behoves the current party political leaders to set to the task of recovering the State from the influence of criminals and establishing broad based institutions empowered by law to oversee public services and political practices. Jamaica will be economically stronger, socially better and politically more stable than it has been for decades and, as a consequence, CARICOM will benefit.
May 28, 2010
caribbeannetnews
The widely publicised bloody clashes over the last few days between law enforcement agencies and armed gangs in Jamaica are as bad for the economic and social well-being of the people of Caribbean countries as they are for Jamaicans.
While the members of the Caribbean Community and Common Market (CARICOM) see themselves as a “Community of Independent Sovereign States”, most of the rest of the world regard them as one area. Only the most knowledgeable make a distinction between them. So, events in Jamaica impact all other CARICOM countries whether they like it or not.
In meaningful terms, therefore, Jamaica’s business is CARICOM’s business. Neither CARICOM governments nor the people of CARICOM can sit back and pretend that events in Jamaica in which criminals defy the authority of the State are not relevant to them. CARICOM countries are tied together and none can deny cross-border relationships in trade, investment and people. Jamaica is the biggest of the CARICOM countries in population terms and it impresses and influences the world far more than other CARICOM countries. Of course, the impression and influence have been both beneficial and inimical to Jamaica and the wider region.
On the positive side, the vibrant music of Jamaica and its musicians, led by the iconic Bob Marley, have clearly given Jamaica global recognition. So too have its holiday resorts which are playgrounds for tourists from all over Europe and North America. Jamaican agricultural products, such as its Blue Mountain Coffee, and many of its manufactured goods have been able to penetrate foreign markets more deeply than those from other regional countries.
And, CARICOM’s negotiations with large countries and groups of countries would be much weaker and far less effective without the participation of Jamaica. Its relatively large population of close to three million people makes Jamaica a more attractive market than the majority of CARICOM countries which, with the exception of Trinidad and Tobago, each number less than a million people. Because of the size of its population, even with the limitations of educational opportunities, Jamaica also has more qualified technical people for bargaining internationally than its partner countries in CARICOM. Therefore, the participation of Jamaican negotiators in CARICOM teams is extremely valuable.
Jamaicans also constitute the largest number of the West Indian Diaspora in the United Kingdom, the United States and Canada. To the extent that the West Indian Diaspora is a group whose votes are wooed by political parties in these countries, much is owed to Jamaicans for the attention paid to Caribbean concerns.
On the negative side, Jamaica’s internal crime, and organised crime that its gangs have exported to Britain, Canada and the United States have created an unwholesome image for the country and severely damaged it economically. In the process, CARICOM has been weakened economically as well, for an economically weak Jamaica is unable to serve as a dynamo for economic activity and growth throughout the area.
Jamaica’s high crime level has been bad for business and bad for its economy. A 2003 study found that the total costs of crime came to J$12.4 billion which was 3.7% of GDP, and a 2007 UN report projected that if Jamaica could reduce violent crime to Costa Rica’s low level, the economy would grow by 5.4%. In a World Bank survey, 39% of Jamaica’s business managers said they were less likely to expand their businesses because of crime, and 37% reported that crime discourages investment that would have encouraged greater productivity.
Apart from scaring away investment, high crime in Jamaica has also caused many of its professionals and middle-class families to flee the country seeking safer environments abroad. More than 80 per cent of Jamaica’s tertiary educated people have migrated to the world’s industrialized nations.
It doesn’t take much imagination to work out how much more socially and economically developed Jamaica would have been today had it not been plagued by over 30 years of escalating crime and its debilitating consequences.
From time to time, outbursts of violent crime have affected the country’s tourism which contributes about 10 per cent of the country’s GDP. It is only because of expensive and extensive advertising and public relations campaigns in the main tourist markets that Jamaica has managed to keep its tourism arrivals by air fairly stable.
This latest, globally-publicized, bloody confrontation between security forces and criminal gangs protecting a Drugs Don, Christopher “Dudus” Coke, from being served with an order for extradition to the United States and arrested, will damage the tourism industry harshly, and, again, once it is over, Jamaica will be forced to spend large sums repairing its image and assuring tourists of its safety.
Other CARICOM countries will not be immune from the Jamaica disturbances. On the basis that tourists see the Caribbean as one place, other Caribbean destinations will also have to spend more on promoting themselves.
The fact that “Dudus” could be protected by well-armed, criminal gangs who have neither respect for, nor fear of, Jamaica’s security forces or the authority of the State, is a direct consequence of governance gone badly wrong. From the mid-1970s the two main political parties in Jamaica, the Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) and the Peoples National Party (PNP) have formed alliances with gangs that have been well-armed and in many cases are involved in the drugs trade. Having taken that step that renders politicians beholden to criminals, the political hierarchy began an inexorable downward spiral to disaster.
In effect, part of the State has been captured by leaders of criminal gangs to whom political parties are obligated. Nothing else but this sense of obligation to “Dudus” Coke can explain why Jamaica’s Prime Minister Bruce Golding, as Leader of the JLP, would have intervened at party level to influence a law enforcement matter between his government and the government of the US.
The Jamaican government now has to assert the authority of the State over “Dudus” and his gang, and it must be done if Jamaica is to be freed from the captivity of criminal gangs.
And, when this particular confrontation is over, Jamaica must start the gruelling process of openly and transparently dismantling all party political connections with gangs, reasserting the supremacy of the State, and weeding out gangs that are the scourge of the society. Any alternative scenario is too terrifying to contemplate but it does include Jamaica being plunged into the status of a failed State.
This is why it behoves the current party political leaders to set to the task of recovering the State from the influence of criminals and establishing broad based institutions empowered by law to oversee public services and political practices. Jamaica will be economically stronger, socially better and politically more stable than it has been for decades and, as a consequence, CARICOM will benefit.
May 28, 2010
caribbeannetnews
Thursday, May 27, 2010
Christopher 'Dudus' Coke is next to God
'Dudus next to God'
By Pastor Devon Dick:
On Thursday last, an unnamed woman expressed solidarity with Christopher 'Dudus' Coke by stating that "Dudus next to God." This affirmation portrays how she perceived both God and Dudus.
Some Christians might find it an affront to God. And it is hardly likely that the churches that will be observing Trinity Sunday in three days time will have such a formulation as they try to explain God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit. But it appears to me that this woman was mouthing a concept of God, to which some sections of the church have unwittingly ascribed. Obviously, for her, God is someone who destroys the enemies, dispenses justice quickly without going through legal human channels, provides for them and protects them. And apparently, Dudus has similar attributes. One woman proclaimed that she has six children and Dudus is the godfather, while another testified that she can leave her door open and her children are not raped.
This concept of God is not empowering and definitely one-dimensional. Rather it makes people passive, expecting handouts only. It is a mentality in some sections of the church in which the main philosophy is to give a fish rather than teaching the person to fish. It is a mendicancy syndrome. Therefore, some churches take pride in announcing what they can hand out to persons on the margins rather than challenging the economic system which impoverishes those on the periphery. And there is a similar mentality in our political system in which politicians boast in Parliament how much handouts are given for school fees, to bury dead and to feed people through the Constituency Development Fund.
Hiding behind prayer
Some sections of the church use prayer in this passive role of doing nothing but only waiting on God to do everything. Therefore, as we listen to the prayers to God about our crisis, it is always telling God what to do, as if God does not know the gravity of the crisis, rather than seeking the will of God concerning our role in confronting the tribulations.
So we would rather pray for more rain than build more dams, and channel more rivers to dams and engage in better stewardship of water. We would rather pray to God about the high murder rate rather than have God induce courage to telephone Crime Stop.
And most of our gospel music is not wrestling with issues of economic justice and equality of all. Not even Rastafarian singers will chant, "Get up, stand for your rights".
The Church has largely moved away from an activist role in society. In Rebellion to Riot: The Jamaican Church in Nation Building (2002), I showed that pre-Independence (1962) the Church was leading in nation building in the areas of economic empowerment, educating the people and holistic concept of evangelism, etc. And in the concluding chapter I suggested that we need to return to that activist role.
The Church needs to admit that the theologising that claimed that "Dudus next to God" is a reflection of the failure of sections of the church to present the proper attributes of God. God must be shown also as a God of justice who rewards the righteous and empowers persons to live a life of service and sacrifice, as well as punishes the wicked for their evil deeds.
Let us not blame so much the unnamed woman for the affirmation "Dudus next to God", but perceive it as an indictment on the church which often engages in cowardice and inaction rather than confronting evil and turning the city upside down (Acts 17:6), and serving God rather than man (Acts 5:29).
Devon Dick is pastor of the Boulevard Baptist Church and author of 'The Cross and the Machete: Native Baptists of Jamaica - Identity, Ministry and Legacy'. Feedback may be sent to columns@gleanerjm.com.
May 27, 2010
jamaica-gleaner
By Pastor Devon Dick:
On Thursday last, an unnamed woman expressed solidarity with Christopher 'Dudus' Coke by stating that "Dudus next to God." This affirmation portrays how she perceived both God and Dudus.
Some Christians might find it an affront to God. And it is hardly likely that the churches that will be observing Trinity Sunday in three days time will have such a formulation as they try to explain God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit. But it appears to me that this woman was mouthing a concept of God, to which some sections of the church have unwittingly ascribed. Obviously, for her, God is someone who destroys the enemies, dispenses justice quickly without going through legal human channels, provides for them and protects them. And apparently, Dudus has similar attributes. One woman proclaimed that she has six children and Dudus is the godfather, while another testified that she can leave her door open and her children are not raped.
This concept of God is not empowering and definitely one-dimensional. Rather it makes people passive, expecting handouts only. It is a mentality in some sections of the church in which the main philosophy is to give a fish rather than teaching the person to fish. It is a mendicancy syndrome. Therefore, some churches take pride in announcing what they can hand out to persons on the margins rather than challenging the economic system which impoverishes those on the periphery. And there is a similar mentality in our political system in which politicians boast in Parliament how much handouts are given for school fees, to bury dead and to feed people through the Constituency Development Fund.
Hiding behind prayer
Some sections of the church use prayer in this passive role of doing nothing but only waiting on God to do everything. Therefore, as we listen to the prayers to God about our crisis, it is always telling God what to do, as if God does not know the gravity of the crisis, rather than seeking the will of God concerning our role in confronting the tribulations.
So we would rather pray for more rain than build more dams, and channel more rivers to dams and engage in better stewardship of water. We would rather pray to God about the high murder rate rather than have God induce courage to telephone Crime Stop.
And most of our gospel music is not wrestling with issues of economic justice and equality of all. Not even Rastafarian singers will chant, "Get up, stand for your rights".
The Church has largely moved away from an activist role in society. In Rebellion to Riot: The Jamaican Church in Nation Building (2002), I showed that pre-Independence (1962) the Church was leading in nation building in the areas of economic empowerment, educating the people and holistic concept of evangelism, etc. And in the concluding chapter I suggested that we need to return to that activist role.
The Church needs to admit that the theologising that claimed that "Dudus next to God" is a reflection of the failure of sections of the church to present the proper attributes of God. God must be shown also as a God of justice who rewards the righteous and empowers persons to live a life of service and sacrifice, as well as punishes the wicked for their evil deeds.
Let us not blame so much the unnamed woman for the affirmation "Dudus next to God", but perceive it as an indictment on the church which often engages in cowardice and inaction rather than confronting evil and turning the city upside down (Acts 17:6), and serving God rather than man (Acts 5:29).
Devon Dick is pastor of the Boulevard Baptist Church and author of 'The Cross and the Machete: Native Baptists of Jamaica - Identity, Ministry and Legacy'. Feedback may be sent to columns@gleanerjm.com.
May 27, 2010
jamaica-gleaner
Wednesday, May 26, 2010
Bahamas: Sea food industry eyes oil slick
Sea food industry eyes oil slick
By INDERIA SAUNDERS ~ Guardian Business Reporter ~ inderia@nasguard.com:
One of the country's largest lobster exporters - holding Olive Garden and Red Lobster contracts - is taking a wait and see approach to the oil spill shifting to The Bahamas, a stance spurred by the current closed season.
It means many local companies like Ronald's Seafood in Spanish Wells will not be in a position to fill any immediate demand for lobster or crawfish until September when the season is opened again. The spill shift, however, could materialize into bad news for other fishermen who depend on the marine life to put bread on the table.
Co-owner of Ronald's Bill Albury said the company would take things one day at a time, monitoring the effects of the oil spill's shift into Bahama waters as millions of gallons of oil still gush into the Gulf following an oil rig explosion on April 20.
"It's not having an effect on us right now because the season is closed for this period," Albury told Guardian Business. " But we don't want anything bad to happen."
It's a statement that comes as a top local meteorologist confirms a shift in wind patterns will most likely slide the oil slick into Bahama waters by the weekend. The surface winds are expected to propel the slick in a more easterly direction to the Cay Sal banks, Bimini and Western Grand Bahama area.
The degree to which Bahamian fishermen - a multi-million dollar industry in The Bahamas - will be affected is yet to be determined. However, for many businesses the oil spill couldn't have come at a worse time, given tough economic conditions already slicing into sales for those in the industry.
"We're already finding it hard to sell what little we could catch now because people just don't have the money to be buying like how they used to," said Marcian Dean, a Potters Cay fish vendor, in an interview with the Nassau Guardian. "Now imagine if this oil spill comes and contaminates the water and kills off the marine life.
"We wouldn't have anything to fish for and that would mean thousands of people would be out a job."
It's a situation currently playing itself out in.
May 26, 2010
By INDERIA SAUNDERS ~ Guardian Business Reporter ~ inderia@nasguard.com:
One of the country's largest lobster exporters - holding Olive Garden and Red Lobster contracts - is taking a wait and see approach to the oil spill shifting to The Bahamas, a stance spurred by the current closed season.
It means many local companies like Ronald's Seafood in Spanish Wells will not be in a position to fill any immediate demand for lobster or crawfish until September when the season is opened again. The spill shift, however, could materialize into bad news for other fishermen who depend on the marine life to put bread on the table.
Co-owner of Ronald's Bill Albury said the company would take things one day at a time, monitoring the effects of the oil spill's shift into Bahama waters as millions of gallons of oil still gush into the Gulf following an oil rig explosion on April 20.
"It's not having an effect on us right now because the season is closed for this period," Albury told Guardian Business. " But we don't want anything bad to happen."
It's a statement that comes as a top local meteorologist confirms a shift in wind patterns will most likely slide the oil slick into Bahama waters by the weekend. The surface winds are expected to propel the slick in a more easterly direction to the Cay Sal banks, Bimini and Western Grand Bahama area.
The degree to which Bahamian fishermen - a multi-million dollar industry in The Bahamas - will be affected is yet to be determined. However, for many businesses the oil spill couldn't have come at a worse time, given tough economic conditions already slicing into sales for those in the industry.
"We're already finding it hard to sell what little we could catch now because people just don't have the money to be buying like how they used to," said Marcian Dean, a Potters Cay fish vendor, in an interview with the Nassau Guardian. "Now imagine if this oil spill comes and contaminates the water and kills off the marine life.
"We wouldn't have anything to fish for and that would mean thousands of people would be out a job."
It's a situation currently playing itself out in.
May 26, 2010
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