The Tribune

SANDALS Resorts International, although admitting that Sandals Emerald Bay in Exuma is “facing severe difficulty in continuing operations because of the multitude of high cost” associated with operating on a Family Island, still believes that these islands are the future for Bahamian tourism.

The group said it was not seeking a government bailout but had put the facts “squarely to the government and asked them to investigate ways in which they can work with us to bring some respite to the impossible economic environment” they now face. The group employs more than 1,400 full time staff at their resorts at Sandals Royal Bahamian, Fowl Cay, and Sandals Emerald Bay. In addition to these Bahamians they have “quietly impacted the lives of other Bahamians through the work of the Sandals Foundation.”

Therefore, it is in the best interest of these Bahamians, if no one else, to do all in their power to keep this resort open — if only to secure their own livelihoods.

We know there are many ways in which Government could help this resort without offering a bail-out or allowing it to become a burden on the Treasury.

Both Sandals and the resort’s previous owners, Four Seasons, were almost crippled by insufficient staff, certainly enough staff with five-star qualifications. This meant that work permits were needed to bring in qualified staff to train the locals. This is one area in which government cooperation is needed.

Although Sandals has not made work permits a public issue, we understand that local staff, agitating for more money and more control, want the expert staff out. This, we are told — and this report is unconfirmed — has resulted in either the withdrawal or suspension by government of Sandal’s work permits for its much needed foreign staff.

If this is so then Bahamians — including government ministers — need to be reminded of where this kind of shortsighted policy can lead. We have the examples of Hatchet Bay at Alice Town, Eleuthera; Royal Oasis, Freeport, and the Jack Tar, West End, Grand Bahama — all tremendous success stories while they lasted, but colossal failures when they crashed, largely from union unrest and government interference. None of these areas — nor its residents — has ever recovered from these disasters.

In the House of Assembly in 1991 then Opposition Leader Hubert Ingraham accused the “incompetent wasteful” Pindling government of having “murdered” the once prosperous Hatchet Bay Farms “in cold blood and in broad daylight.” His words were mild when one remembered the colossal disaster.

Sir Lynden on taking over the farm in the name of the Bahamian people, boastfully declared that the Hatchet Bay Processing Plant was to be “the greatest success story in agriculture in the history of the Bahamas.” The well fed and fully employed residents of Alice Town clapped their hands in joy as “we government got we farm.” They have never clapped their hands since when several years later they were wandering like nomads throughout these islands looking for work to feed their families. Hatchet Bay was this country’s greatest and most disgraceful failure.

In 1936 American Austin Levy purchased 2,000 acres of land at Hatchet Bay and started the successful farm that supplied the Bahamas with all of its milk, poultry, eggs and ice cream. Alice Town residents were fully employed. That generation had never known want.

And then the PLP arrived on the scene. They coveted the successful farm. We knew that work permits were going to be the straw that broke the camels back. We recall one of their top executives often flying to Nassau to negotiate with government. He often stopped in to discuss his problems with Sir Etienne Dupuch, the late publisher of this newspaper. The farm could not be efficiently run without its scientists.

Obviously, the PLP felt that untrained Bahamians, as long as they had a high school education, were adequate to fill the positions of the experts. We felt sorry for this gentleman, as each time he arrived in Nassau he looked more haggard, and his coat hung more loosely over a shrinking frame.

Eventually on March 1975 government took over the assets of the Harrisville company — Hatchet Bay – for $3 million. Five years later it had lost $2.5 million of the taxpayers’ money “playing chicken farm,” according to the late Norman Solomon.

The company’s scientists and managers were fired either because they were of the wrong nationality, colour or politics.

Two years after the takeover the Opposition was asking for a committee — which was refused – to investigate what was happening to the people’s money at Hatchet Bay.

It was reported that the farm was hatching Mercedes Benz cars instead of chickens and persons living near the farm had been given dozens of free eggs that had been distributed to a “certain gentleman” by the farm’s officials. The following month 20,000 baby chicks died of suffocation at Governor’s Harbour airport where they were held in coffin-like boxes by Customs because a farm official had failed to produce proper documentation and pay the $6,750 duty. Eighteen days after Prime Minister Pindling had boasted about his “greatest agricultural story”, the plant had to close because there were no chickens to slaughter. Truck loads of poultry died from disease and overcrowding, milk had to be dumped because someone forgot that certain ingredients had to added to it.

Yet government was going to borrow another $1 million to keep the plant open – more money than Harrisville had spent on the farm in the previous quarter century.

And all for the want of the needed scientists for whom work permits were needed. It could almost be classified as a criminal disaster committed by people who had no idea what they were doing – but doing it with the people’s money.

It is understood that the Christie government is now restricting work permits without appreciating the needs of individual businesses. Mr Christie has recently said that he is the bridge from the days of Sir Lynden into the future. We think he got his directions confused. Today he appears to be more of a bridge back to the disastrous decisions of the Pindling government rather than a bridge forward into a bright future.

We hope, for the sake of Exuma, that Exumian workers will accept reality and acquire some wisdom. If not, they could end up like the people of Alice Town who have never recovered from the loss of the Harrisville farm in Hatchet Bay.