The Tribune

THIS is not an easy place to live. It may be paradise for the people who pass through, enjoying beach days, hotel amenities, and the hospitality of people who are not paid anywhere near enough for what they do, but for Bahamians, it is far from pleasant.

We are told, every day, that we do not deserve comfortable lives. The government says our human rights are debatable. Employers say their profits are more important than our wellbeing. Our religious leaders tell us we need to have more faith, tithe more, and work more. Many of our colleagues who have bought into it all tell us we need to be grateful and suggest that any inequalities we experience are the result of personal failings. Too many people are prepared to defend systems at the expense of people.

Look at marital rape. The people against it consistently talk about the “sanctity of marriage” and ignore the dignity and human rights of people.

Look at poverty. People confidently blame it on the people experiencing it, as if it is a choice. The results of the BGCSE examinations, year after year, are taken as a reflection of the students rather than the failing education system.

Somehow, the people are always wrong. The people are always being graded. The people are always deserving of the struggle they endure. Very few care to look at the systems — the ways they are designed to oppress some while elevating and privileging others.

It is not often that we see a change made that can directly benefit people in situations of vulnerability. It is more often that people are told to grin and bear, it just has to be this hard, and it will get better. Better rarely comes.

In recent weeks, a few announcements were made that directly impact us, and the responses to those announcements have highlighted the chasm between people of different income levels and access to resource, including the lack of empathy and interest in the plight of people whose struggles are persistent.

Earlier this month, the Prime Minister announced that minimum wage would increase from $210 to $260 per week. It must be noted that unions were lobbying for a minimum wage of $300. The minimum wage was unchanged for far too long, and, given the cost of living, The Bahamas definitely needs to move to a living wage. Even with the poverty line set at $5000 per year, the poverty rate in The Bahamas is 12.5%.

A 2020 study found that a living wage — enabling people to have basic necessities including nutritious diet, housing, education, healthcare, transportation, savings, and emergency funds — in New Providence is $2,625 and in Grand Bahama is it $3,550. The increased minimum wage will be $1040 per month. In a household of two working adults who are paid minimum wage will have a combined income of $1680.

Even one-bedroom apartments are at least $800 and do not include electricity, phone, or internet service. Rent is already half the income of a person working full time and receiving a minimum wage.

Look at the increasing cost of food, the increased fuel surcharge by BPL, and the high price of gas. If rent is split 50/50, and the electricity bill is $200 per month (a very conservative estimate), how are people who are paid minimum wage expected to meet other obligations with $135 per week?

If they have cars, can they afford gas? Can they buy nutritious food? When they run out of gas, where will they get money to get the tank refilled?

Many Bahamians have asked, over and over again, “How are people supposed to survive?” and it is a valid question that never seems to get an answer.

In July 2022, president of the Bahamas Hotel and Tourism Association suggested that tipped workers should not benefit from the increase in minimum wage when it is implemented.

He said: “The reality is that maybe we should not be hit with the same paintbrush in terms of the level of increase for those individuals as opposed to people who are not receiving gratuities. They make minimum wage but considerable tips by either working in casino and food and beverage. We want the government to take that into consideration.”

This is asinine and cruel. Gratuities have nothing to do with wages or salaries. No business should have ever been allowed to pay anyone below minimum wage, whether or not gratuity is involved. Tips are extra. They are up to the discretion of the customer.

In food and beverage, gratuity is split, and it is not only shared among those directly serving patrons. There are good days and bad days. In fact, there are good weeks and terrible months. Ask any hotel worker who is dependent on tips what September is like. If you really want to know how unpredictable it is, ask a hotel worker what it was like after 9/11.

To suggest that tips, which vary greatly, make up for salaries and wages is deceptive to those who do not know better. Imagine, major resorts raking in obscene amounts of money, saying they would simply rather not pay the paltry minimum wage of $260 per week. Imagine their Bahamian operatives saying they would like the option to leave the employers — the people delivering the service and earning the money (the vast majority of which leaves the country, by the way) that pays high-level executives in comfortable offices who do not depend on tips — to the whims of patrons who have no obligation to pay more than their bills and no commitment to the people in a country they visit for a good time. Imagine that!

Financial inequality is not the only issue that makes it hard to live in The Bahamas. Human rights are still being presented by the government as a debatable issue.

Marital rape has consistently been in the news since the 2017 report by UN Special Rapporteur on Violence Against Women Dubravka Šimonovic’s report which indicated that marital rape is the most pressing issue.

The CEDAW Committee and the Human Rights Council have recommended the criminalisation of marital rape.

Five years later, the government is hosting events and giving platforms to people who fundamentally do not support women’s human rights and insist either that men should be able to rape their wives or that they should be treated differently due to their marriage.

Take a moment to think about how hard it is to leave an abusive relationship and household while receiving minimum wage. Where would you live? How would you feed yourself? What if you have children?

The government has repeatedly failed to firmly state its position which ought to be in alignment wit its obligations to protect and expand human rights and its commitments, made in international spaces, but to the Bahamian people, to meet international human rights standards by domesticating them through legal reform.

There is no room for debate and there is no need to consult with people rapist apologists. We need a government that meets its human rights obligations without fear or apology.

Yet, here we are, hearing from the press secretary that it is up to us, members of civil society, to make enough noise to pressure the government into doing what it said it would do, even 29 years ago when it ratified CEDAW, the women’s bill of rights.

People often say this is not a real place. Fortunately or unfortunately, it is very real. We live here. We work here. We struggle here. We strive for better here. We do what we can to make it better — some of us for ourselves only, some of us for the collective, and some of us with a focus on the most marginalised.

From minimum wage to marital rape, the issues we face are not individual. We did not create these problems ourselves. They are results of oppressive systems that allow people in positions of power to retain that power and wield it recklessly.

We are being shown, over and over again, that those people will not dismantle the systems that benefit them, and they will continue to blame us for our own pain and discontent.

Do our demands need to be much louder, or are we at the point where our tactics need to change? Would it cost us more to identify our own power and withdraw our contributions (undervalued until they are gone) than it does to remain? Again, this is not an easy place to live.

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2 @dinosandcomics on Instagram. This account shared highly relatable comics that make commentary on human experiences and their relationship to mental health. The characters are dinosaurs, sometimes joined by a turtle. In one comic, the first dinosaur tells the other that it is too tired to work. The second dinosaur suggests it goes to sleep. The first dinosaur refuses, saying it has too much work to do to go to sleep. The second dinosaur says, “The only solution is to stay up all night not doing it.” Many people can relate to a pending task being in competition with a physiological need. The comic is particularly good at capturing moments of anxiety and the power of friendship and support.