As the country welcomed hundreds of international passengers through Lynden Pindling International Airport today, Opposition leader Philip Davis charged that the government is not doing enough to protect Bahamians from a potential second wave of coronavirus or the worst of the economic crisis.
“European countries are opening their borders to international travelers today, too. I note that travelers from the United States are banned, however,” said Davis during a press conference at PLP headquarters today.
“Even some states within the US are requiring fellow citizens traveling from hotspots to quarantine for 14 days upon arrival and yet our government has hardly changed its plans since cases in the United States began surging.”
With hundreds of tourists pouring in from Covid-19 hotspots like Florida and New York, Davis said the Public Hospitals Authority made the dumb decision to let go over 30 junior doctors and interns who have spent the last three months risking their lives on the frontlines of the Covid-19 fight.
“The firing of Bahamian doctors during a pandemic is stupid and immoral and the government needs to reverse that decision immediately,” Davis said.
“The Prime Minister gave one of his National Addresses on Sunday. He has stopped doing press conferences because he isn’t willing to answer your questions – questions like, how could you fire doctors during a health emergency, when you should be reinforcing our frontlines instead?”
Davis said the crisis for the country is it has a Competent Authority who is not competent. To make matters worse, he says The Bahamas now has an Attorney General who has joined the prime minister in misleading the country by failing to deliver a resolution to extend the Proclamation of Emergency made by the Governor General on March 17 in time for it to be tabled in the House of Assembly before the end of its last session and the budget debate.
“I want to make it clear the mess created over the Covid-19 orders is entirely the fault of the FNM and Dr. Hubert Minnis.
The government did not fail to table the resolution in the House, as the Attorney General claims. They did deliver it in time.”
“The Prime Minister stood up and tabled the resolution. You could go back and watch him do it on TV.”
“What then happened was, for reasons which baffled us all, they moved to postpone the vote to the following day. Why? We were all fully prepared to debate it.”
Davis opined that after three years in government, members of the Minnis Administration still do not understand a basic function of parliament.
“They obviously only got as far as putting half a reminder in their phones: “Hey, Siri: Don’t let me forget to renew the Emergency Orders.”
“But they forgot to say: “Don’t let me forget to ask the House to vote on them”.
“This is pure ineptness and total incompetence,” he said.
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