I spoke to one of the idiots "cleaning up the mess" the other day, he could not describe the process, nor how it actually cleans up the spill.
Sadly, he was the owner of the company, and clearly, has his business / contracts due to his relationships and not his education / expertise and skill.

This place is run like the worst "dog and ponny" show imaginable.

A few rich families in this country want every nickel; they're willing to do almost anything to get it, they're in bed with the politicians. The net resulting income distribution is a disaster. For young men, the future isn't bright even with a job. The young men who don't have / can't get a job, they have little to loose. Survive via a life of crime & murder.
If we include MORE of the young males in productive society, allowing the hope of a brighter future, we would decrease the criminal population.
Obviously this leads to discussions about improving education, diversifying the economy, getting rid of the organized crime between big business and government etc etc.
One of the most corrupt industries that may have a large effect on the crime stats is the construction industry. A handful of wealthy Bahamians dominate construction to the point of starving out the small guys. Big firms pay locals lousy, some don't even pay according to law, i.e. overtime and holiday pay. This is an important industry to distinguish, as it has ability to provide decent incomes to young men who lack post secondary education.
The corruption in the construction industry contributes in two ways to societies problem of crime: 1- When contracts are tendered (negotiated behind closed doors), the resulting artificially fat contracts go to "connected" contractors at the expense of other projects. As an example, remember way back when, the straw market downtown Nassau was "tendered" / awarded to a local big time connected contractor, for a whopping 22mil. Thankfully government changed, put a stop to this, ended up built for 7 million. Had that gone through, how many other projects would have been cancelled.
2 - concentration of work goes to a small handful of the "connected" rather than distributed fairly/honestly via proper tendering, the result, the dying of the small contractor, and a decrease in the number of jobs.
Other industries have corruption, but construction has the ability to pay reasonably high wages & overtime and therefore offering a brighter future income potential to those who are otherwise challenged due to lack of education and opportunity.
Clearly the service industry cannot provide a bright future to the masses, perhaps a few may excel, while the majority starve.
Also to diversify the economy, and improving education may help the labor market, and therefore the young male.
A large segment of the population left with little hope = trouble / crime.
The ruling classes control and create the society, has so far, dodged the bullets generated from the same.

More good stuff from Zakary above!

Interesting how the data available completely contradicts what is publicly presented.

"Normalcy Bias" is one of the favourite tools used by Governments. Simply put, in the case of Government, they play on the fact that people cannot possibly believe that Government would commit any actions against the peoples best interest.

Despite how bad things are, despite all corruption, and even with the average person having conversations about government corruption; people due to "normalcy bias" can not ever really grasp how bad things are, as a result they don't act upon circumstance.
If people could really grasp, absorb, understand, realize etc, the people would march downtown and toss them out of office, physically if necessary!

for those of you not familiar:
normalcy bias: (sociology) The phenomenon of disbelieving one's situation when faced with grave and imminent danger and/or catastrophe. As in overfocusing on the actual phenomenon instead of taking evasive action, a state of paralysis.

and anther example definition:
Normalcy Bias defined: This is an example of Normalcy Bias, a survival mechanism our brains are equipped with that can place us in grave danger when we’re faced with something traumatic. Simply put, it causes our brains to insist that all is okay. Everything will return to normal. For most of us who have never faced true peril, Normalcy Bias tells us that nothing bad will ever happen.
This explains why so many Jews continued living in Germany, even after they were forced to wear identifying yellow stars and discriminatory laws were passed against Jewish people. Life had been so good for so long that, surely, things would get better. Jews who could have easily afforded to move out of the country stayed, and perished as they could not accept the possibility that life would get worse.

Real GDP growth has been discussed in many other articles, was projected to be in the high 2% range, perhaps almost 3%, but projections downgraded to 1.5% possibly with Bahamar not opening.
Clearly GDP will not expand by 3.5-3.8%, that would be an increase of 280 million at 3.5%.
Even if it did, it would likely not be keeping up to the real inflation rate; - notice how much more all the goods you buy are costing each year. Notice goods seem to go up by almost 10% / year - the last few years. So when GDP growth is lower than actual inflation, that is a shrinking economy, which is a recession.
GDP = approx 8 Billion! For government revenues to increase by 500 million , that would mean government was going to somehow grab 6.5% more out of the GDP

If the government has collected 110 million in VAT revenues in the first quarter, this equates to approx 440 million in a year. Yet we are still 197 million short of funds in this budget?

Seems to me the picture is very bleak, if we can't balance this years budget, despite a 440 million dollar annual VAT collection / increase in revenue, how on earth can they fund a new health care program?

Where do they expect to collect the proposed additional increase in government revenues of 500 million, or , was this 500 million their projections of total VAT collections for the budget year?

Anyway you slice it, we are completely broke, more than broke when you consider that we have to borrow just to fund the years expenses.
A government can no more borrow to fund it's programs than individuals can borrow to support themselves. Just imagine if your own household budget this year required you to borrow $20,000.00 just to eat and pay bills. Your budget next year would be that much more expensive do to your payments on your new $20,000.00 loan.

Face it folks, the game is over, all that's left is for the have nots to starve!

Dr Minnis has no clue whatsoever what a National Debt of 73.4% of GDP means.

It's quite simple, it means that the countries owes 73.4% of what the Gross National Product is.

However, 73.4% of the GDP does not go towards loans. Much more likely its 2 or 3% of GDP goes towards the loan interest annually, with a much smaller amount going towards principal.

The total loan balances (i.e. 73.4% of GDP), if this amount was to come out of "somewhere", if it could, and was applied as Dr. Minnis suggests, the debt would be eradicated in one year.

Why is it that the politicians can barely speak, clearly don't understand anything they talk about, much less make any sense when they do speak? One must ask themselves how these bumbling fools make it through a day??????

wondering what happens when all of a sudden everyone is covered, and then people start going to the doctors more often, how long will it take to expand health services to accommodate the increase in traffic. Have they estimated the increases in traffic, have the estimated the required increase in facilities, or will this become a joke like the Health Care in Canada where people wait a year to see a doctor?

Hey Cobalt: our only chance for "The citizens of the Bahamas need to quickly organize a consortium of honest, bright-minded, honorable men and women willing to establish a new political party" would be if we brought them all in on work permits!

All of them types here be crooks

Hey FNM_Retards, I get your point, and sentiment; though you have to admit, that so far, nobody from here has been able to properly manage the airport, BEC, the Dump, Road Traffic, CCTV, Solar Power, or political rallies, and a whole hose of other things. We are living in an near failed state!

A small handful of successful business men know how to "rape and pillage" this country, getting things done somewhat efficiently albeit; but aside from them (and they make us pay dearly), everything else is a near joke!

Basically we either turn everything that we want to work over to the "handful" of "successful" business men, who will rape and pillage us even more, we can bring in foreigners or we can live with the status quo.

What you say the best option is?

Great Idea

Though lets be realistic, it hard to get a tire fixed here properly, much less repairs to your cars engine.

I don't think it's likely that we can find any high end watchmakers amongst us.

I guess we can bring people in to study at the school and then they can work here on permit.

Why not start by improving our schools so a graduate can read and write and do some math, then perhaps 20 years down the road we may have some trainable people.

Rolex soon be sorry, likely the only labour force worse than China's can be found here.