By RASHAD ROLLE

Tribune Senior Reporter

rrolle@tribunemedia.net

NATIONAL Security Minister Marvin Dames said he cannot say why the number of people he identified on Sunday as missing after Hurricane Dorian differed from the figure Assistant Commissioner of Police Solomon Cash gave at a recent press conference.

In a press statement on Sunday, Mr Dames said 279 people are missing. Three weeks ago, ACP Cash said 33 people were still missing.

“I don’t know the reason for (the difference),” Mr Dames told reporters before Cabinet yesterday.

“The numbers that were given are not Marvin Dames’ numbers. They are the numbers compiled and taken from the centralised listing…All of these numbers are now in the hands of the police. Let’s not get fixated on this and I think sometimes we get caught in a position where we say ‘oh something is amiss, what is amiss?’ Our only intention in all of this is to ensure that we reach those persons who were impacted, and we understood that coming out of Dorian, our infrastructure had been completely destroyed.

“Communication had been completely destroyed. The whole network was missing and so the police are still in the throes of trying to get all this information that was out there in the hands of different individuals and agencies into one centralised repository.”

Former Health Minister Dr Duane Sands pushed the issue of the Dorian missing into the spotlight last week when he blasted the Minnis administration’s handling of the matter. He said an explanation was needed for how hundreds of names were culled from official lists. He said too many government agencies were involved in dealing with the Dorian missing, creating a “recipe for disaster”.

Asked about this, Mr Dames said: “Well again, let me speak generally because I don’t want to get back to what the former minister said. He and I had a conversation yesterday and we’re friends but as friends too, we all have a right to speak truth to power if we feel that we’re correct and that’s exactly what I did.

“We came out of a disaster that would’ve been a challenge to any developed country. We’re an archipelago of some 700 islands stretched over some 100,000 square miles of sea. We don’t have helicopters, planes and everything else. I just indicated that the infrastructure on Abaco and Grand Bahama and its adjacent cays were shot. Communication had been shot, transportation had been shot, people had been displaced. A lot of people had lost their homes, okay. That’s what we were faced with, so it is expected then therefore that getting information centralised would’ve been a significant challenge for any country, even a developed country… Now it’s the police jobs to find all of this loose information, wherever it is and bring it together. This happened in September and they have been working to do that. We’re now in COVID and that’s an added stress on what they’re currently doing, but they have been doing a fantastic job.”

Yesterday, Progressive Liberal Party leader Philip “Brave” Davis called for an official investigation. 

“We are calling for an independent inquiry either by outside police investigators or through a commission of inquiry to determine the fate of the missing in Abaco and Grand Bahama after Hurricane Dorian,” he said. “We do so having taken notice of the public statements of Dr Duane Sands and Marvin Dames. The clashing narratives within the Minnis administration about the number of persons missing in the wake of Hurricane Dorian do not go down well with the public. The PLP is not interested in the intra-party bickering. The country needs to know the facts. How many are missing or lost and presumed dead? What are their names? What is responsible for their status?

“FNM ministers, party operatives and certain media outlets are woefully projecting this matter as a competition about ‘whose story is better’. Some operatives claim the inconsistent statement by Dr Duane Sands. Others say the nine-month absence of clarity by Marvin Dames…is the story to be preferred. We are of the view that the indictment against this government for confusing the number of the missing against institutional and public need, demands an urgency for clarity, truth of process and transparency,” Mr Davis said.