The Tribune

A bloody weekend has put our murder rate in the spotlight again – with five men killed between Thursday and Monday.

Police suspect some of the crimes are because of retaliation between “rival” groups – we can assume gangs fighting one another, while National Security Minister Marvin Dames said Bahamians had no need to fear a gang war as the police had the situation under control and were “very much on top of that”. We would respectfully suggest that five murders in such a short span shows the police are very much are not on top of that.

It is difficult for police, of course. They might have Shotspotter technology to help them react more quickly after a gun is fired, but we need a shot stopper to prevent the guns going off in the first place – that’s what we need to address.

Mr Dames had his views on that too, as he blamed “a manifestation of decades of neglect” for the country’s crime problems.

That sounds a long way from the Marvin Dames in opposition who lambasted the PLP saying that the FNM would “approach crime as the scourge that it is” and who urged his predecessor as minister Dr Bernard Nottage to “call him” if he wanted “real solutions” to the crime problem.

Indeed, in November 2016, in his role as FNM leader, Dr Hubert Minnis referred to “a rash of murders over the weekend” and “Bahamians scared to go out at night due to rumours of retribution killings”.

Here we are, with the FNM in power, and another rash of murders, and not just rumours but police all but confirming retribution killings taking place.

In one way, Mr Dames is right. We didn’t get here all of a sudden, and there is a long history of neglect that got us to where we are now. However, if we look back down the decades, we see the murder rate has generally gone up. As recently as 1991, the murder count was as low as 28, according to police records. By 2010, that rate had tripled. It has dropped since a peak in 2015, but it’s still far higher than decades ago, the time frame to which Mr Dames refers.

He talks about gun violence, but when it comes to what is fueling this, he says he’ll leave that to the researchers to tell us. Why? Can the minister not inform us? More to the point, can he inform us what he is doing about that? We know we live next to the US with its easy availability of guns – but the minister should not be shy about informing us of what is being done to staunch the flow of weapons.

He also says: “We’re seeking to do our role, certainly as a government. We’ve been looking at introducing a multi-agency, a multi-faceted approach at addressing these problems.”

All well and good, but the Marvin Dames on the last campaign trail would have had harsh words with him, as he did with Dr Nottage, when he questioned what Dr Nottage had been doing for the previous five years if he was “just rolling out” new anti-crime initiatives a few months before the general election. Here we are, with a general election in the air, and here is Mr Dames “looking at” new measures.

We are in a worse situation than decades ago, and we absolutely need to deal with problems in our society that lead young men particularly down this path. But we cannot simply pin our problems on our history to absolve ourselves of our current problems.

We have too many deaths. We hope the Marvin Dames of the campaign trail has a word with Minister Marvin Dames about the urgency to deal with that.

Still out of work

There has been much optimism recently – and rightly so – about the surge in tourism in The Bahamas. Not everyone has been able to join in the celebrations, however, as hotel union chief Darrin Woods pointed out yesterday.

Mr Woods, who leads the Bahamas Hotel, Catering and Allied Workers Union, says that “no higher than 40 percent” of his members have been called back to work so far.

It doesn’t quite bring our optimism down to earth with a bump, but it does serve as a reminder that we’re not fully recovered yet by far – and there are many people still in need who don’t have a pay cheque coming in to keep their families going.

The hope, of course, is that the recovery keeps going and those staff members do get the call to get back to work. It’s not just hotel workers, either. For every hotel worker, there will be a straw vendor or a hair braider sitting at home, a trip operator or a souvenir stall holder.

The impact of COVID-19 on our economy has been deep, and not all those affected have been able to get back to business yet. They’re going to need continued support – and programmes such as the feeding network might well need to be extended to help people along.

The recovery won’t be complete until all those who want to be back at work can be. Every step forward brings that day closer – but we’re not there yet.