The Tribune

By NICOLE BURROWS

Instead of beginning the conversation myself about the news of the past week, I asked a few colleagues to send me their own questions about the week’s news so I could answer specifically what they wanted to talk about.

Most of the questions were about the recurrent fires at/smoke emanating from the city dump.

Who on earth would build an affordable housing district like Jubilee Gardens next to a public dump site and who on earth would buy a mortgage to live there?

I believe the answer to that question is in the word “affordable”.

A person who would approve a site immediately next to a dump as a location for human habitation in affordable housing is someone desperate to keep office, or get into office, and someone who would seek to appeal to the less fortunate among us.

Those who would choose to live there, as “affordable” housing suggests, are people who couldn’t afford much to spend on a mortgage to begin with.

It’s shameful that politicians, developers and banks have taken advantage of these people, and for so long. The fact that you sell a false ideal of “home ownership” is criminal in and of itself - you never own a house or the property it’s on until the bank gets its last penny from you. The bank will indulge you in the fantasy that it is yours as long as you pay your debt to them, because that is really what you own ... not a home, not a house, not a lot, you own a debt to the bank or the developer.

The minute you stop paying or can’t pay for that debt you own, the bank will step in and show you who the real owner of that property is. When you consider that false home ownership and the fact that you buy into it, and in doing so you take on a lifelong debt to live in the mouth of the city dump, I think it’s borderline scandalous, maybe even inhumane.

Banks couldn’t possibly expect the residents there to live long enough to pay their debts in full, or maybe that’s a part of the equation.

What should be done about the homes and people affected by the latest dump fire?

I’ve heard some people, even residents there at Jubilee Gardens, say the government should move the dump site.

Well, that can’t happen, and if it could, it certainly would not happen easily. The waste material is already there in and on the landfill. You can’t just move it.

You could probably begin a brand new dump site elsewhere, but you would be doing that on virgin ground and it would have to be done properly. Even starting a new landfill elsewhere, with bells and whistles of recycling or waste-to-energy treatment, you still have to deal with what happens to the existing site.

How will it be remediated - even if it is shuttered - and who will remediate it? And what about the people next door to it, in the meantime, who are still being affected by it?

That also includes people a little further away from Jubilee Gardens. I don’t think anything other than buying out those mortgage debtors and letting the people relocate themselves is/will be acceptable as a solution for the residents, especially those closest to the landfill in Jubilee Gardens.

Why do the Jubilee Gardens residents expect that the government should be compelled to help them at all, when they knowingly moved next door to a dump site that’s been smoking off and on for 25 or more years?

That sounds about right; I used to visit my boyfriend and his family out in that area when I was 16. On a draughty night that smoke would create a thick layer of fog that could impede driving so you had to go real slow over the highway.

It wasn’t nearly as bad then, because we had fewer people piled on top of one another living on New Providence, and therefore less garbage at the city dump, but the smoke was still around. I think people in general, but especially people who are disadvantaged and people who are disadvantaged in The Bahamas, tend to think that the government is supposed to take care of their every need from birth to death and beyond.

That foolish belief is the fault of the people and the fault of the government for allowing the people to believe it.

But I suppose it is in the interest of any sitting government, especially in a third world country, to make the people believe the government is the fixer and provider of all things.

The government’s real purpose is to provide an environment in which you, as a citizen or resident, can adequately care for yourself and your family. The government of the Bahamas has not done that across the board or in any significant, sustained way. Maybe if they had put more of the 1980s drug money into building the country’s infrastructure instead of their bank accounts, the residents of Jubilee Gardens and really the rest of New Providence today would not have “nowhere else to go”, or “no one else to turn to”, or be demanding that they “be treated like humans” with valuable lives.

They would have the wherewithal to go where they need to and not wait for handouts ... a cot, a tent in a gym, or snacks and refreshments.

But this dump smoke thing really goes beyond Jubilee Gardens; it affects many people on the western end of the island. I know several people who are close enough to have been affected with respiratory complaints this past week. It’s maddening. But I guess we’ll soon see what the novel plan is to arrest the dump fire and smoke problem. Maybe they’ll agree to let the Bahamian waste management consortium address the problem and not make it any more political than it already is.

What is the alternative to engaging the Bahamian waste management consortium to solve the problem?

Go foreign? That’s always the go-to plan, right? Bring in foreign people or foreign entities to solve the problem for us when we created it and may know better than anyone what it will take to solve it. And then they’ll up and leave again.

I see Kenred Dorsett, environment minister, says they’ve approved the remediation plan by a Bahamian engineer (Carlos Palacious) and his company. I don’t want to think that that approval has been swiftly granted because that person’s family is a “PLP” family. I would surely hope that is not the case, as it has been suggested.

I hope that he represents a company that is both professional and cutting edge, with international contacts to assist along the way with whatever his company’s landfill remediation plan may be. And I would also hope a decision is not made out of sheer desperation, using that young man and his business as a scapegoat, to have a name to call in the midst of controversy, only to have it backfire on us all and then we’re back to square one, again, on the problem.

The FNM, specifically Hubert Minnis, says if elected to office as the next government, they will fix the problem at the dump once and for all. Should we believe him?

Where have we heard this tune before? Anyone seeking office knows they have to convince you they’ll do something about the problems that face the nation.

As voters, we just have to learn how to decide who best to believe, and that would typically be based on track record. Minnis needs to be careful about those loose, free promises he’s making, unless he has a personal endless supply of money to fix all the country’s problems.

People shouldn’t vote for anyone on account of promises made, in spite of desperation. You see what the governing party has not done, compared to all their promises? What does that tell you? Frankly, if you believe them then maybe you deserve to be lied to. And not that I’m in the habit of agreeing with the PLP or its Chairman Bradley Roberts, but he did point out - and there is evidence to prove it - that Hubert Minnis, as Minister of Health, did nothing about the solid waste disposal problem during his time in office.

In fact, there is a recorded total of $33.5m borrowed from the Inter-American Development Bank and not accounted for with respect to solid waste disposal and remediation on New Providence and the Family Islands. So, are you going to take Minnis’ word for it that he will fix the problem now, because all he needed was to be Prime Minister in order to do it?

Regarding politicians’ promises ... Prime Minister Perry Christie made one about the fire and the dump smoke, too, particularly about reparations for Jubilee Gardens residents. What do you make of that?

The same thing I make of Minnis’ promises. He’s a real Blow Hard. How are you going to promise people that you will restore them better than they were before?

He is quoted as having said the government will “put them back in the position they were in, or even a little better than they were in”. If that’s not campaign speech, I don’t know what is. Even if that were true or possible, the dump site is still vulnerable, and so are the people as long as it is, so what’s all the talking for?

Christie has his own stock of flammable waste matter every time he speaks.

What do you think about Kenred Dorsett’s comments about Renew Bahamas?

It was reported that Renew Bahamas pulled out of managing the city dump “claiming low profitability” of the venture, but Kenred Dorsett said it wasn’t supposed to be a profitable venture.

That’s conflicting. Did Renew Bahamas not know the nature of their own venture? Or did the government of The Bahamas not explain it? Which is it?

Dorsett said the work done by Renew Bahamas was “a pilot project”. He said “it was done at no cost to the people of the Bahamas”. He said Renew Bahamas left because “their fiscal regime was not one which allowed them to sustain themselves”.

I say, if you knew The Bahamas needed a real, long-term solution to a mammoth problem, why would you make an agreement with anyone who didn’t have the “fiscal regime” for the long haul, and therefore could not remain involved in the long term, or at least long enough to fix the problems then hand the project over to another capable entity equipped with the proper “fiscal regime”?

It’s unbelievable how foolish all of that is. And I say the people of The Bahamas have paid a cost ... Renew Bahamas’ transient status and the government’s inability to make a sensible decision on this issue has cost the people of dearly, in (literal) fallout alone.

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