Daily Archives: May 14, 2021

HRB suggests incident not isolated but result of predatory culture; Immigration Dept says matter was investigatedSomeone has to have the courage to bring it to an end

NASSAU, BAHAMAS Human Rights Bahamas (HRB) yesterday called for the immediate removal of all male officers from the Department of Immigrations safe house and demanded a full investigation into claims of sexual assault of detainees at the facility.

The call follows recent allegations by a 27-year-old Surinamese woman that she was drugged and raped by an immigration officer.

The allegations were outlined in a writ filed in the Supreme Court on May 11, which claimed the woman was unlawfully arrested, falsely imprisoned, assaulted, battered, drugged, sexually assaulted, raped, sodomized and deprived of her constitutional rights.

This comes as the highly disturbing allegations of a detainee being drugged and raped by a male officer are now being compounded with new information reaching HRB, suggesting a series of similar attacks on female victims at that facility in the past several months, the advocacy group said in a statement.

A picture is emerging, is not of one or two isolated incidents, but rather an organized, practiced and premeditated scheme of drugging and raping detainees, perpetrated by a small group of officers.

Information from former detainees also reveals a highly toxic wider culture of drunkenness and predatory behavior among the male officers generally, who regularly sexually harass and intimidate female detainees, watch them while they are showering and violate their right to privacy, safety and dignity in countless other ways. Meanwhile, the female officers look the other way.

We expect further lawsuits to be filed in due course and have full confidence [in] the Bahamas Judiciary to ensure the justice is done in each case.

In a statement last month on the same matter, the Department of Immigration said there was no substance to the allegations.

The department said an investigation into the incident by its Corruption, Complaints and Intelligence Unit, along with the Royal Bahamas Police Forces Sexual Offenses Unit, was concluded.

It claimed the woman denied that she was assaulted and requested to be deported.

To be certain, the female migrant, the subject of the alleged inappropriate conduct, has made no complaint of and denied the occurrence of any inappropriate conduct. Further, the female insists on her immediate repatriation, the department said.

According to the writ, the victim was interviewed by immigration officers on April 18 but was told that she would remain under detention until the incident was investigated.

She was reportedly extremely fearful she would not be allowed to go home and was also refused legal representation.

The defendant went on a hunger strike in the days after the interview and was subsequently deported from The Bahamas on or around April 25.

The defendants named in the matter include Attorney General Carl Bethel, Minister of Immigration Elsworth Johnson, Director of Immigration Clarence Russell, Officer in Charge of the Carmichael Road Detention Center Peter Joseph and Immigration Officer Davon Adderley.

Immediate action

HRB yesterday sought to remind the government that the immigration safe house was created by order of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) because there was no safe place for women and children in the Immigration Departments custody.

To say this dismal facility is failing to live up to its purpose may be the understatement of the year, the statement said.

Instead of being held in safety, these women and children have been rendered into the clutches of predators.

In addition to removing all male officers from active duty at the safe house, they should also explicitly be barred from entry at any other time, and a full review and investigation of the activities and culture among those officers must be launched immediately.

The group added: The reluctance of successive administrations to deal with the rogue agency which the Bahamas Immigration Department has become serves as active encouragement for officers to continue to behave as if they are a law unto themselves and treat detainees as if they are worthless, have no rights and can be physically and sexually abused at will.

Someone has to have the courage to bring it to an end.

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REMOVE THEM: Rape allegations spur human rights group to demand ban on male officers at immigration safe house - EyeWitness News

By RASHAD ROLLE

Tribune Senior Reporter

rrolle@tribunemedia.net

A 2020 study by the Government and Public Policy Institute of University of The Bahamas concluded that a living wage in New Providence and Grand Bahama is $2,625 and $3,550 per month respectively.

The September 30, 2020 study is authored by Lesvie Archer, Olivia Saunders, Bridget Hogg, Vijaya Permual and Brittney Johnson.

Our gross living wage estimate for New Providence is 26 percent lower than the Grand Bahama living wage estimate, nearly 200 percent higher than the national minimum wage, 127 percent higher than 2013 poverty line and nearly 75 percent higher than the minimum wage hike proposed by a local union, the report says.

Our living wage estimate for Grand Bahama is nearly 300 percent higher than the living wage, 200 percent higher than the 2013 poverty line and 140 percent higher than the minimum wage hike proposed by a local union.

The countrys minimum wage is currently $210 a week.

To calculate the living wage, researchers considered costs of an affordable and nutritious diet, house and utility, education, healthcare, transportation, clothing, recreation, emergency and unexpected event funds, savings and investments, among other things.

Their research followed a model laid out by economist Richard Anker who defined a living wage in terms of what the researchers say is its ability to sustain a persons physical, emotional, social and cultural needs and that of their family beyond mere subsistence.

Researchers concluded that the daily cost of food on a model diet averages $10 per person in New Providence and $1,150 per month for a nuclear family of four when accounting for free school lunch programmes.

The model diet reflects a nutritious diet, local food preferences, low-cost selections, and is calorie sufficient, they wrote.

In Grand Bahama, the cost of food on a model diet is likewise $13 per day and $1,550 per month for a nuclear family of four.

Researchers concluded that $650 and $900 respectively are the monthly costs for basic but decent housing in New Providence and Grand Bahama. This includes $400 and $700 respectively for rent, and $250 and $200 for utilities like electricity, water and gas.

Non-food and non-housing costs were estimated at $2,200 in New Providence and $2,800 in Grand Bahama. For nuclear families of four, the costs were estimated at $4,000 and $5,750 respectively.

Researchers methodological strategy involved fieldwork on New Providence and Grand Bahama, including examining houses and the prices of items in food stores; and secondary data sources like the 2020 University of the Bahamas Housing Registry, 2019 Labour Market Information Newsletter, 2017 Labour Force Report, 2016 Government of the Bahamas Salary Book, etc.

Following Richard Ankers work, researchers distinguished between a living wage for New Providence and Grand Bahama.

They wrote: Our decision to estimate separate living wages signifies a sensitivity and respect for each islands unique socio-economic composition. First, New Providence reflects an urban environment and houses more than 85 percent of the nations populationGrand Bahama, on the other hand, reflects more of a suburban jurisdiction, especially when compared to the more rural islands across the Bahamian archipelago. Per the latest Housing Expenditure Survey Report, Grand Bahama is under-represented in the poorest and second highest quintiles and is over-represented in the middle quintiles (quintiles 2,3 and 5). This middle over-representation suggests Grand Bahama island would benefit greatly the implementation of a living wage. This suburban-urban-rural difference is an important distinction as it has implications on each islands poverty rate, level of employment and cost of living.

Cost of living expenses vary across islands due to inter-island transportation expenses. This means that the cost of living on each island is largely influenced by the cost of transporting goods and services therein. As a nation that imports over 90 percent of its food and materials, New Providence island operates as the hub for related warehousing, administrative and distribution activity.

New Providence receives bulk import orders, breaks them down and distributes them to the remaining islands, some of which are more than 200 miles away. Transportation costs generated from this distribution process affect the cost of living. For example, on March 11, 2020, the cost of gasoline was estimated at $4.50 on New Providence but $6.50 in the nations most southern island of Inagua. Accordingly, the variation in living expenses across all islands of the Bahamas suggests the inadequacy of proposing to calculate a single living wage for low-wage workers across the entire country. Therefore, inspired by the International Labour Organisations living wage specialist Richard Ankers call to respect the differences between urban and rural environments by calculating their living wage estimates separately, this study offers two living wage estimates, one for New Providence and one for Grand Bahama.

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Study: Living wage in New Providence is $2625 and $3550 in Grand Bahama - Bahamas Tribune

Over 5,000 applicants per daySome travelers report being stranded in the US as they seek to return home today

NASSAU, BAHAMAS Tourism Minister Dionisio DAguilar said today that the government has had to adjust its manpower and approvals process to handle an absolute explosion in health visa applications, noting were up to over 5,000 applications a day.

Speaking with reporters ahead of todays Cabinet meeting, DAguilar said that the government has had to reduce the time frame in which to apply for a health visa to 14 days in light of the fact that fully vaccinated travelers can now apply for a health visa months in advance as opposed to the five-day window with an RT-PCR COVID test.

Most of our foreign visitors are coming from the United States in excess of 90 percent, he said.

Most of those travelers have a card from the CDC (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) that shows the type of vaccine and the date that both doses were applied.

Its fairly straightforward for us to see when the vaccine was given and what type of vaccine was given.

We only acceptAstraZeneca, Moderna, Pfizer as well as Johnson and Johnson.

We have seen an absolute explosion in the number of people that are applying.

He continued: As you can imagine, when you had the PCR test, people could only apply within five days of travel.

Now, when you have a vaccine, you can apply months in advance and that somewhat overloaded the website at the outset.

We have had to bring it back down to where you can only apply to within 14 days of travel.

We are up to over 5,000 applications a day.

Eyewitness News understands numerous Bahamians seeking to return home today were awaiting approval of their health visas.

DAguilar said the application surge was very encouraging, but said officials must synthesize and go through all the applications.

Everyone has grown to expect us to respond in 24 hours, the minister noted.

That has slipped with the greater demand and so we are having to adjust our manpower and approvals process to accommodate this surge in applications.

At the end of April, the government announced updated public health measures and entry protocols for fully vaccinated travelers.

Bahamian citizens and residents who are fully vaccinated are now exempt from COVID-19 testing requirements when traveling inter-island from New Providence, Grand Bahama, Abaco, Exuma and Eleuthera to any other island.

Also, effective May 1, international visitors traveling to The Bahamas from other countries, who are fully vaccinated and have passed the two-week immunity period, will be exempted from testing requirements for entry and inter-island travel.

DAguilar admitted his concerns over the hesitancyof many Bahamians to become vaccinated and aid in the countrys economic revival.

The Bahamas has administered more than 36,000 vaccine doses to date.

Im all in with thevaccine, he said.

I think the benefits far outweigh the risks.

I think that if you take the vaccine, there is a huge probability that you will not end up sick and have an unfortunate outcome.

Most importantly, when you get the vaccine, it significantly reduces your ability to spread the virus to someone else.

If youre in the tourism sector or a frontline environment where you can get exposed, you dont want to take it home to someone who hasnt been vaccinated and cause them to have an unfortunate outcome.

I think its very important that, for our economy to bounce back and for tourism to flourish and grow, that our destination has to record low levels of COVID-19.

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Absolute explosion of health visa applications; reports of returning Bahamians unable to receive health visas - EyeWitness News

By NEIL HARTNELL

Tribune Business Editor

nhartnell@tribunemedia.net

Harbour Island resort operators yesterday said the post-COVID tourism rebound has exceeded expectations by 25-30 percent, and added: Were still rocking and rolling.

Joseph Dargavage, partner at Romora Bay Resort & Marina, told Tribune Business that if present momentum is maintained - and aided by the removal of COVID-19 PCR testing requirements from May 1 - then the boating and yachting sector may return to normal pre-COVID business volumes as early as winter 2021.

Revealing that this would be a season or two earlier than his own predictions, Mr Dargavage said he presently sees no signs of the excellent Spring rebound enjoyed by many Harbour Island and Family Island resorts and marinas letting up.

Also an Association of Bahamas Marinas (ABM) vice-president, he added: The boaters and yachters have definitely found their way back to The Bahamas. Speaking specifically to Harbour Island, both marinas - Valentines and Romora Bay - had excellent months in March and April.

For Romora Bay, from May going through July and rolling into the summer months, I dont see it letting up. Now add in May 1, and the ability for fully vaccinated people to come in without testing, and that really is going to boost the summer tourism industry even more. We see no reason why, in the Out Islands of The Bahamas and Harbour Island, the summer months cannot be excellent.

Mr Dargavage said fully vaccinated visitors have already started arriving at Romora Bay, adding that the resort was continuing to have people calling daily asking about The Bahamas new entry policies for persons who have had two jabs.

Both from an ABM and Romora Bay perspective it has gone beyond expectations, he added. We were hoping and thinking this might happen, but no one knew for sure. I would say its exceeded expectations by over 25-30 percent. Were grateful and blessed these boats and yachts have chosen The Bahamas as their first destination after this pandemic.

I would say that by winter season 2021, the fall and winter season of 2021, we should be getting back to normal in the boating and yachting sector. Me personally, I thought it would take a season or two. As long as we keep doing the right things and adhering to the protocols, both locals and the tourist community, then theres no reason why we cannot stay on this path.

While the overloading of the Governments health travel visa website by fully vaccinated visitors seeking to book their vacation several months out remains a potential impediment to The Bahamas tourism rebound, especially since applications are now restricted to within 14 days of travel, Family Island destinations have rebounded more rapidly than the countrys mass market locations.

The Central Bank reported that Family Island air arrivals for the 2021 first quarter were only 30 percent down on their 2020 comparative, which was only impacted by the pandemic in its last three weeks, indicating that high-end tourists in the niche private aviation and yachting markets were starting to return to locations where social distancing was easier to achieve.

Benjamin Simmons, proprietor of The Other Side and Ocean View properties, confirmed the growing optimism by revealing that occupanciesat his resort were in the 80-90 percent range following what he described as a record March.

Agreeing that the removal of COVID testing requirements for fully vaccinated visitors will serve as a further boost, Mr Simmons said: Were still rocking and rolling here it seems. Were still banging. Were running at 80-90 percent occupancy, and had the best March on record.

I know the real estate market is insane. Were very fortunate. Business has been great, and interest seems high. The vaccination thing hasnt really resonated yet, but I think it will. The news has not got out to the masses yet; the removal of the test based on being vaccinated. As it is, weve not seen any particular uptick, but I think it will make a difference come later in the summer.

Mr Simmons said theres so much pent-up demand, so much need fortravel that persons were travelling even though they may still have to produce a negative COVID-19 PCR test. People are accustomed to taking the test; its a way of life, he added.

He agreed, though, that the US vaccination roll-out and removal of The Bahamas testing requirement for those with two jabs will further enhance the comfort and confidence associated with travelling to The Bahamas.

May is looking great, Mr Simmons told Tribune Business. People are booking two to three weeks in advance. Were full up with weddings in the summer. The gaps are filling in. Its definitely looking like one of the best summers weve had.

Id say were looking at 70-80 percent occupancies. Last year we were at 5-60 percent for that May to June period. People start wanting to come, and everybody wants to get out and get a break.

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Briland rebound beats projection 'by over 25-30%' - Bahamas Tribune

NASSAU, BAHAMAS The Royal Bahamas Defence Force (RBDF) has called off a search for a boater who reportedly went missing during a journey to Abaco over a week ago.

According to the RBDFs report, the man was aboard a 22-foot craft that left Nassau on Sunday, May 2, enroute to Abaco.

But his vessel reportedly began taking on water along the way as he contacted his relatives sometime that afternoon to express concern, noting that he was around 15 miles east of Bullocks Harbour, between New Providence and Abaco.

The US Coast Guard, Operation Turks and Caicos (OPBAT) and the RBDF began searching once they received information about the missing man.

Along with the Bahamas Air Sea Rescue Association, police marines unit and volunteer boaters, an aerial search was also conducted as far as Sandy Point and Freeport, Grand Bahama, without much success.

Commander William Sturrup, the RBDFs Search and Rescue coordinator, noted: After days of canvassing an expansive area of waters around Chub Cay and the Berry Islands, we have suspended Search and Rescue operations for the missing individual.

The Defence Force is grateful to interagency partners and the United States Coast Guard for their support in this activity, and the Royal Bahamas Defence Force remains poised to keeping Bahamian waters safe.

Sturrup thanked the various agencies involved in the search, and expressed sympathy to the family.

The RBDF noted its vessels on patrol will continue to be on the lookout for the overdue craft.

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RBDF calls off search for boater missing for more than a week - EyeWitness News

NASSAU, BAHAMAS Members of the Royal Bahamas Defence Force (RBDF) Entry 41 and Woman Entry 13 recently donated grocery items to the Urban Renewal Center, St. James Road.

In commemoration of celebrating 16 years of service to the country, the combined male and female squad decided it was only fitting that they do a charitable project in an inner-city community.

On Tuesday, May 4, 2021, the officers and marines donated cases of breakfast items including tuna, mackerel, corned beef, yellow grits, water, disposable lid containers and boxes of male clothing. Receiving the grocery items were the organizations Supervisor Daphne Bannister; Tanya Gibson, who serves as secretary; and Samantha Seymour, who all expressed their appreciation for the donated items.

Led by Sub Lieutenant Miska Clarke, members of the squad had intended to conduct a breakfast giveaway, but due to the COVID emergency orders, it was agreed upon to make a bulk donation of breakfast items. The center seeks to provide breakfast a few days a week for residents of the Farm Road community who are in need.

The combined squad of 39 members observed 16 years as a unit, after enlisting on February 28, 2005, and together they continue to make significant contributions to the organization.

RBDF Commodore Raymond King, along with the officers and marines of the force, congratulated Entry 41 and Woman Entry 13 on their achievement and extend Bravo Zulu to them as they continue to give back to the community while serving their country.

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RBDF's Entry 41 and Woman Entry 13 give back to community - EyeWitness News