By LEANDRA ROLLE

Tribune Staff Reporter

lrolle@tribunemedia.net

FOUR Bahamian diplomats who were stationed in Haiti are now safely back home after the shock assassination of Haitian President Jouvenal Moise last week, said Foreign Affairs Minister Darren Henfield.

Minister Henfield said yesterday the diplomats arrived in the country on Monday night and are currently in good spirits. He also said that five Bahamians are still in Haiti awaiting return home.

“I just wanted to report as Minister of Foreign Affairs that I was very pleased last night (Monday) to receive all four of our Bahamian diplomats from Haiti on Bahamian soil. They arrived around 8pm last evening. They’re all in good spirits. They’re all in good health,” he told reporters before going to a Cabinet meeting.

“Of course, we were working assiduously to get them home since last week Wednesday following the tragic killing of Haitian President Juvenal Moise. We still have about five Bahamians in Haiti (and) some other residents that are normally in The Bahamas that we need to work on how we ameliorate their circumstances in the future. We’re working on that with my ministry and the health people and hopefully, we can come up with a conclusion really soon to see how we can best go forward.”

Asked when it is expected those people will return home, Mr Henfield was unable to say.

“No, there is no timeline,” he said. “We have been working on this now since the closure of the borders, almost. Haiti presents to us a bit of a challenge in that they had no vaccination programme, and they went ahead as you know and held Carnival for what we saw as an incubator for COVID but we need to find a way to work through these circumstances.

“… I reached out to my colleague the Prime Minister who was also a former Minister of Foreign Affairs, Dr Claude Joseph several times. I’ve also spoken with their director general in the Ministry of Tourism and so we didn’t want it to appear that we’re abandoning them in this hour of challenge.

“I wanted to reassure them that even though we want our people home, The Bahamas or the Bahamian government as well as CARICOM, we stand in solidarity with them and hope that this issue could come to an end very quickly.”

The Bahamas closed its embassy in Haiti last week, hours after President Moise was shot dead at his home by a group of masked assailants. His wife, Martine Moise, was also shot in the attack and is currently being treated in a US hospital.

Yesterday, Mr Henfield said the Bahamian embassy in Haiti will remain shut until officials feel confident it is safe for the diplomats to return.

In February, the government banned all commercial flights and vessels from Haiti in what officials said was done as a precautionary measure to prevent the risk of imported cases of Covid-19 from that country.

The ban, however, has since been extended several times.