The Tribune

By TANEKA THOMPSON

Tribune News Editor

tmthompson@tribunemedia.net

Take a drive through the ‘Over-the-Hill’ communities on any given day and what will you see is sure to depress you.

Garbage is piled up on the side of the streets in many areas while dilapidated, sagging clapboard homes are plentiful, as are abandoned, broken down cars. And every so often, women or young children meander through the street, clutching used water bottles or buckets that they will fill with water from a dirty city pump.

The use of outdoor toilets, or pit latrines, is common for many residents who do not have indoor plumbing.

The images are a far cry from the idyllic scenes used to promote The Bahamas and lure tourists to our shores with promises of sun, sand and sea.

However, they are well known to those who live in Bain and Grants Town or Centreville or those who frequent the inner city. While we might have become used to the depression in these communities, we should all be upset that they continue to be neglected by successive governments who peddle change and transformation in exchange for votes.

Except that the long-awaited transformation has yet to come.

For decades the people who live in these communities have been waiting. They have been waiting for the myriad of promises made by slick-talking politicians who have pledged economic stimulus and community transformation to come true.

Many of these Over-the-Hill residents are ardent supporters of the Progressive Liberal Party (PLP), voting the party’s candidates into office election after election with unwavering dedication. In spite of their unflinching support, these residents have little to show for it. However some say they are tired of the status quo and tired of supporting the PLP.

Neglect

Seventy-six year old Peggy McKenzie is a life-long resident of Bain Town. She has been a supporter of the PLP almost as long as she has been alive.

She told Insight that she walked door-to-door ahead of the last general election, convincing people to vote for the PLP.

However, Mrs McKenzie (whose real name has not been used at her request) is adamant that she will not vote in the next election or support the party that she, her grandmother and other relatives fought to get elected in an era when black rule seemed more like a dream than reality.

She, like many other residents Insight interviewed from her community, feels “neglected” by the PLP. They say they are fed up with being spoon fed promises before election day only to be forgotten shortly after the votes are counted.

When Insight interviewed Mrs McKenzie, she was standing outside her small convenience store in Bain Town. The store’s shelves are nearly empty and the money she makes from sales, along with her pension, is barely enough for her and her husband, who is 86 and has prostate cancer, to make ends meet. She said because she has a small store, she gets no assistance from the Department of Social Services. Almost 80, she feels discarded by the party she worked so hard to help get elected to office.

“I don’t see my representative (Dr Bernard Nottage),” she said outside her store, flanked by two younger women who listened quietly as she spoke. “I see him if I go to a funeral and he is there and then I say, ‘I don’t see you, you treat me bad.’ And then he would say, ‘I comin’ tomorrow,’ but tomorrow never comes.

“It look like they neglect the elderly people, like they ain’t too interested in the elderly people and we are the set who built the foundation for them,” she added.

“I have all kinds of needs but they (the PLP) don’t come around to check you out. I used to go with them when my legs was good, campaign with them, up and down behind them, and since my legs get bad - my legs get bad during the last election when I was behind them campaigning - I couldn’t finish. Since I couldn’t finish, it’s just like they throw me away.”

Mrs McKenzie said she spent her younger days campaigning for the PLP. “I used to be up behind my grandmother, toting Milo Butler bag and I was campaigning from then,” she recalled. “And I born and grew up in Bain Town and I is a strong, strong PLP, but now this next election, I don’t want nobody come to my door because I’m not voting for nobody at all. They neglect me too bad,” she said. “I’m surviving on a pension but my light keep cutting off all the time, by time as I pay a light bill, it’s two or three months before I could pay a next light bill. It’s rough, (with) no help, I don’t know where to turn.”

She says many people of her generation are staunch PLP supporters and continue to be, despite feeling let down by their representatives, because the party helped to unravel the racial inequality that left black Bahamians oppressed before Majority Rule.

Ambadark Thompson, a 62-year-old resident of Bain Town, is disenchanted by the unfulfilled promises for his area. Mr Thompson sells fruits and works part-time with the Department of Environmental Health, carting away junk and debris from neighbourhoods.

Over the years he said he has seen the social decay in his community, with a proliferation of households headed by single mothers who leave children unattended for hours to roam the streets while they are out at work. He said his community needs “hope, help” and jobs.

“The area has been neglected,” he said outside his house on Augusta Street, shortly before hopping on his bicycle to ride to work. “Some MPs, they are from a different area where the people really wouldn’t vote for them, but we bring them inside our area and my people vote for them. But when they reach, the promises they give us to get here, they just forget it once they get it in.”

Mr Thompson said the loyalty many inner city residents have for the PLP is passed on from generation to generation. “Because Bain Town need hope and help, when you need help sometimes you could only vote for that party who you know all your life. Your ma knows it, your daddy knows it and your sisters them know it. So really you will vote for that party thinking you could at least get a job from this particular party. We were the PLP stronghold for so long, but now the Bain and Grants Town people are getting smarter. We getting smarter because every time we put the MPs in, they fail us.”

It’s not just residents of Bain Town who feel neglected. Prime Minister Perry Christie has represented the people of Centreville for nearly 40 years. It is an accomplishment of which he is proud, his success in politics and the fact that the people he represents have voted for him even during his brief stint as an independent candidate. However, a tour through the area reveals similar scenes as Bain Town and Grants Town.

“This area here is, believe it or not, the constituency of the prime minister and to me he isn’t doing anything in this area,” a 50-something male resident of the area told Insight. We found him on a weekday afternoon, standing outside a web shop, staring forlornly at a receipt showing his lottery numbers. The resident, who did not want to be identified, believes Mr Christie is disconnected from the area he represents and needs to be more visible in the community.

Like some residents in Bain and Grants Town, he said he is apathetic towards the voting process because he has seen no real impact on his own life from supporting politicians. “I’m tired – I even ain’t voting no more in this country and I am a patriotic Bahamian. But I ain’t voting no more in this country because I ain’t voting for the PLP, I ain’t voting for the FNM, I ain’t voting for the DNA. I’m not voting for anybody no more because they are the same people.”

Promises

According to The Tribune’s archives, residents of these communities have been plied with broken promises of revitalisation for decades.

In October 1980, then Deputy Prime Minister Arthur Hanna revealed a plan to pump $20 million into Grant’s Town over the ensuing four years.

During the 1986 budget debate, then Prime Minister Sir Lynden Pindling spoke of his government’s lofty plans to resuscitate the “decaying” area of Bain and Grants Town. He said $5m would be used for this purpose.

“My government’s plan is still to transform this depressed, decaying area into a thriving community, but it now proposes to do so in a more homogenous manner and at a more upscale level,” he said at the time. “Over a period of time commencing in 1986, the area will be transformed into a thriving community with sidewalks, decent parks and playgrounds, good and safe residential communities and an upbeat commercial sector.”

At that time, Sir Lynden said his administration would consider designating the area as an “economic enterprise zone with special incentives”; develop Wulff Road between East Street and Blue Hill Road as a “new Bay Street-like shopping area” with duty free shops; and turn selected areas between East Street and Market Street into “green areas” reminiscent of Central Park in New York City.

In 1992, Sir Lynden Pindling promised to “devote $100m over the next 10 years to revitalise and rebuild what Paul Adderley called ‘this cradle of black Bahamian civilization’.”

Most recently, FNM Leader Dr Hubert Minnis has vowed to transform the area if his party is elected into office.

“Life continues to be challenging for those who live in the Over-the-Hill areas,” the Killarney MP said during his 2015 New Year’s address to the nation. “The PLP continues to neglect these areas. Therefore we intend to deepen our discussions with key stakeholders to share our framework for such an initiative. In the second quarter of this year, we intend to initiate a transformative community project as a pilot of what is possible if you have focused leadership in charge of the government.

“The FNM, in our next term in government, will introduce tax-free zones for the revitalisation of Over-the-Hill, the inner city and depressed areas,” Dr Minnis said.

George Smith, a former PLP Cabinet minister during the Pindling era, admitted that successive governments have not done what is needed to transform the inner city.

“I think we haven’t devoted the resources necessary to create any kind of renaissance in those areas. That doesn’t just apply to Centreville and Bain Town; it exists through Kemp Road and other parts (of New Providence) where people belong to the lower income of society,” Mr Smith said.

“We need to determine as a party, as a government, as a nation that we are going to revitalise those areas. We should earmark money for that and create incentives where people will be inspired to move businesses in those areas. We have to put aside a large percentage of money in the national budget to bring life back in those areas. That will help the social environment; help the younger people not to look to crime. I think the prime minister is doing a commendable job in setting the pace for economic growth in the country but we have to come up with innovative ways to promote those areas.

“It’s never too late to do right, it has been the dream of all the people who represented those areas to do something with those areas.”

We agree with Mr Smith, that it is never too late to make good on an old promise. Hopefully as members of the PLP gear up for another election cycle, they will remember their lofty promises and make good on their word to revamp the depressed areas where so many of their supporters live.

• What do you think? Email comments to tmthompson@tribunemedia.net.