EDITOR, The Tribune

I was very disappointed with the Prime Minister‘s decision to reopen the numbers web shops.

As a result of Hurricane Dorian and the ongoing Corona virus, the Bahamas government has disbursed many millions of dollars from the NIB fund in unemployment, housing and food benefits. The continued financial health of this rapidly depleted fund should be a major concern to the many thousands of Bahamians who now rely on, and will continue to rely on, NIB as their only means of income and subsistence.

It would be interesting to know what percentage of these recently disbursed funds will now end up in the coffers of the numbers houses rather than spent on what they were intended for, ie food and housing, etc. Do the taxes derived from the number’s businesses compensate for the social disintegration on the flipside of that coin? These are numbers of diminishing returns.

The proliferation of these government sanctioned rackets is a blight on the country, equally as insidious, addictive and destructive as the cocaine epidemic of the Pindling era was. Having looked upon all this, what do you tell the man in the mirror Prime Minister?

IAN MABON

Nassau,

May 7, 2020.