The Tribune

By EARYEL BOWLEG

Tribune Staff Reporter

ebowleg@tribunemedia.net

PROGRESSIVE Liberal Party Chairman Fred Mitchell has called the government’s relaxation of travel visa requirements for cruise passengers out of Florida “discriminatory.”

“It is discriminatory,” the senator said when asked for comment. “And shows that the whole visa scheme is an ill-considered sham.

“The PLP will scrap it altogether and make sure that people who enter the country are COVID-free or fully vaccinated.”

He called the health visa a “bureaucratic nightmare” and a “double standard”.

“The people in Bimini complain for example that while the police are harassing them about curfew infractions, tourists ride up and down Bimini flagrantly ignoring the rules without let or hindrance,” he also said.

On Saturday, Tourism Minister Dionisio D’Aguilar announced the loosened restrictions at a ceremony celebrating the home port debut of Crystal Cruises’ Crystal Serenity ship.

The minister explained: “With cruises that initiate out of Florida, the government has loosened its restrictions somewhat by saying all of those passengers that commence or embark in Florida will not require a health visa on the condition that the cruise company, first of all, guarantees that if any of the cruise passengers get symptoms or feel unwell that they are disembarked.”

He added that home porting cruises and their passengers are observing all of the travel health visa protocols.

Mr D’Aguilar, however, did highlight some positive cases anticipated, but also the protocol established.

“We’ve anticipated that there will probably be some positive cases and how that will work through. So that has taken many, many hours of discussion, but protocols have been established,” he said.

“So the cruise companies must guarantee that anyone who presents with symptoms or tests positive is immediately disembarked and returned to the United States by medical evacuation. All of the guests are either fully vaccinated or they receive a PCR test on the date of embarkation that obviously has a negative result.

“So with those protocols in place, guaranteeing to medically evacuate them out of the country and to follow the protocols to disembark them from the ship, the guarantee that everybody is vaccinated or anybody of the age of ten has received a negative PCR test on the date of embarkation, the government said ‘okay, you don’t need to do the health visa.’”

Attorney and the PLP’s election candidate for Freetown Wayne Munroe, QC, also criticised the decision to loosen restrictions for Florida cruise passengers yesterday.

“Well, we were told that this was all to mitigate the spread of COVID-19 which is to say, to prevent somebody coming into the Bahamas with COVID-19,” Mr Munroe told The Tribune yesterday.

“The fact that you put a burden on them (cruise lines) to move somebody who is infected means that you are admitting that there will be people who enter the country infected.”

He added: “By waiving it….it really makes a lie of their justification. They told us that you know you could travel to the US. You just present a negative test to the ticket counter and they verify it and then they let you go, but they said the ticket agent wasn’t …qualified and they needed to be scrutinised. Well, now the thousands of people coming by cruise just don’t require a travel visa.”

PLP Leader Philip Davis previously called the travel visa “an unnecessary tax imposed by the FNM government on Bahamian families and businesses when they can least afford it”.

The PLP has vowed to end the travel health visa system if the party wins the next election and the programme is still in place.