The Tribune

EDITOR, The Tribune.

Earlier this morning, I hopped onto a public service jitney bus for Route 10-A, which means that it would have taken me by the Bahamas Telecommunications Corporate building on John F Kennedy Drive.

As the driver neared that location, I was amazed to see that the building was under extensive refurbishment, and with no forwarding information as to where to go for whatever services that were accessible at Head Office, but why?

After making further inquiry on the same jitney bus that dropped me off, apparently, the driver decided that he would not travel all the way to Cable Beach, as the passengers’ pickups were few, and far apart, this worked in my favour ... as I got back onto the jitney, complained to the driver about the closure of B. T. C’s Head Office -that the trip was all in vain...a passenger suggested that I visited the Navy Lyon Branch, which I did. On arriving there I was referred to the General Post Office at the Town Centre Mall, Baillou Hill Road, and this meant that I had had to take a public service jitney for Route 16 A, I did.

When I got to that location, I was told by a security officer, to visit their Mall-at-Marathon branch...to get there, I had to get a public service jitney for Route #21, I did.

Feeling confident that they would have the 2023 Telephone Directory, scouted inside to the main service counter and you guessed it?

The clerk told me that they didn’t have any, she didn’t think that they printed any? Wow, all of this could have been avoided had they had the common courtesy to post instructions, where services x,y & z could be obtained, but why hadn’t they?

If the overarching reason was due to the delays in clients collecting their copy of the directory, is one thing?

But to out rightly, not have these very important pieces of business tools and emergency hardware not available for an entire country, speaks volumes to the challenges that confront the smooth and professionally astute management of that corporation, it appears does lie in the balance .. the Administrative team of BATELCO (now-BTC), in connecting vital dots and other features of the organisation’s business?

Diving into specifics, if another impediment to the decision to not publish the telephone directories was cost, it is easy to see in the natural why that avenue should present a difficulty?

If on the other hand, as the year by year facts might reveal that in the end they were left with more telephone directories not collected than collected?

Might I proffer up a scenario?

1. If the proof of non-collection were of such, here is a suggestion to mitigate much of that: Those customers, or clients that did regular business with the General Post Office, and had frequent visits to their postal boxes, have those numbers tallied and order Telephone Directories to cover that number?

2. Those businesses that did regular business with the Postal Service, consider what that number might be, and provide directories for them.

3. All of the Members Of the Parliament and their assistants have theirs.

4. All of the various Bahamas Government Ministries, Departments and Offices, have theirs.

5. All Of the various hospitals and private medical offices, make theirs available and so on and so forth, now you got the picture.

And how would you get it to them?

When the 2023 Telephone Directories that should have been made available would have arrived...have postal workers from the Mail room, etc, place a notice in their Boxes, that those books were ready for collection, etc? How difficult is that?

But, to have across the board, a flatout non production, printing of a country’s Telephone Directories is atrocious and shows very poor judgement.

I call on the authorities to not only look into this lapse in judgement, but to fire those responsible. The country is in this state because of the tolerance, and incompetence...even work place corruption, giving positions to people based on favour, not competence, must stop. In the end we all will suffer at the hands of ignorance.

Finally, it is not too late, we need those 2023 Telephone Directories even if the numbers were significantly reduced.

FRANK GILBERT

Nassau,

April 14, 2023.