By EARYEL BOWLEG

Tribune Staff Reporter

ebowleg@tribunemedia.net

NATIONAL Security Minister Wayne Munroe said Bahari Bahamas applied and received a permit on Wednesday to feature Bahamian national symbols on their merchandise.

He told The Tribune on Tuesday that the company didn’t have the permit.

Yesterday, he said the company denied awareness of his ministry’s efforts to force compliance with the law and did not see an email his ministry sent.

Mr Munroe said at a press conference earlier this year, he “made it clear that they intended to enforce the law”.

He said: “You ought not lose ten thousands of dollars of inventory for the want of $20.”

Bahari, he added, “found their way into the ministry yesterday, paid their $20 and got their approval”.

When a reporter noted that even government officials wear Bahari clothes, Mr Munroe noted customers are not targetted.

“We,” he said, “put no obligation on the customer to ask somebody, did you get permission to produce this flag? Did you get permission to produce this product? To me and the persons who made the law, that would be too onerous to put on members of the public, to go into stores and ask that. In this whole circumstance, we try to be reasonable with business people.”

“It was open to the ministry after May to go to every business place that didn’t have approval and seize all of their products that were non-compliant. It was open to the ministry once we emailed them and they didn’t respond to go to their locations and seize all of their product. That is not this administration.”

“This administration just seeks to accommodate business while we enforce the law. So the law is so that there can be consistency, so that nobody can derogate our symbols, and as far as possible, we work with our business people, but they have to comply with the law. It is not overly onerous. You take a picture of the product, you pay a princely sum of $20. And that’s it, and you can now do it painlessly on MyGateway.”

Mr Munroe said officials would continue to monitor advertised products on social media to check compliance with the law.