By LEANDRA ROLLE

Tribune Staff Reporter

lrolle@tribunemedia.net 

FRUSTRATED Potter’s Cay Dock vendors say they are still waiting to receive the promised assistance from the government more than a week after their stalls were completely destroyed in a fire.

Owner of the “Tall Boy” stall, Dwain Bastian said vendors are fed up and just want the government to stop “dragging their feet” on the matter.

He is one of several business owners who lost their stalls completely to the fire on April 11. Six were burnt to the ground while two other stalls were partially damaged in the incident.

Mr Bastian also lost a boat in the fire.

Since the blaze, there has been marked clean-up progress at the site – a situation vendors attributed to their hard work along with the help of others.

“I was amazed that we had doctors, lawyers and police out here helping us to clean Potter’s Cay Dock,” he said. “We also had people like Lincoln Bain who came by and brought two dumpsters and they did a good job.”

Following clean-up efforts, Mr Bastian claimed the government has pledged to have an assessment carried out of the area, which he was told would take some four to six weeks to complete. 

However, he said no assessments have to been carried out so far, nor is it clear when will rebuilding work will begin in the area.

“We have waited and waited and waited and sometimes we come out here from six o’clock in the morning and be out here until six o’ clock in the night and nothing has happened so it’s just a bunch of talk,” he told The Tribune yesterday.

“The last time we sat down with Mr (Michael) Pintard, he told us that the assessment was going to take four to six weeks which I don’t think makes any sense. We had a licensed engineer out here yesterday and he said he could come out here and said that would take him not even four to six hours but the minister say it gone take him four to six weeks. I mean this space inside here ain’t even 200 feet long...I don’t see how this gone take any four to six weeks to do assessment work.”

The situation has left workers discouraged, Mr Bastian said.

The entrepreneur said it also doesn’t help that the country is still battling the COVID-19 pandemic, which makes finding work even more difficult during these hard times.

He said: “The people out here are hurting. You have one or two vendors who need counselling from this and we need the government’s help like yesterday. We don’t need them to be dragging their feet and doing things when they want to do it. Come on man.

“The people are the government. We put these governments in place, the MPs supposed to work for us and to serve us and that’s what their supposed to do. Come and make sure your people straight.

“The government need to reconstruct and rebuild the stalls on Potter’s Cay Dock and strop dragging their feet because when other countries have disasters, they jump on board and send this money out of this treasury so what happened to the vendors, your own people, and you say Bahamians first?”

Matthew Rolle, another vendor who lost his stall to the fire, also admitted that times are hard for workers.

“Ends are not meeting,” he said. “Right now, we are working each other to assist each other but that soon stop because ain’t nobody have no more money because if Tall Boy have something, he will assist me and that money running out so now we ain’t gone have nothing to assist each other with.

“We had some promises from the minister but….I want to see what’s going to happen this week.”

For his part, Gregory Bowles, secretary general of Bahama Docks and Allied Venues Association, pledged the association’s assistance to help vendors as best as they can during these extraordinary times.

“Right, now we are reaching out to some organisations to see how we could do some fundraisers to buy building material for them,” he said.

“(But) we have guys who can get the work done. Once we have the material and the assistance that we need, we can do it. We just need materials to work with… and as soon as we’re given the green light to do the building because the government said they have to do an assessment.”