It's time like this when you wish you had some of that $600m wasted on Bahamasair or the $400m + in BEC from all the political rate adjustments or God knows how much at ZNS, etc. all services that could have been efficiently provided by private businesses these last 40+ years. The chickens have come home to roost and now we all have to pay the price. FNM and DNA say no new taxes but how the hell else you will get the money? Any talk about reducing wastage and public spending is just wishful thinking. That's why we have to get out of this big government mentality.

The problem with the Bahamas is this long-entrenched practice that demands secrecy in everything and only politicians being allowed to utter anything of substance publicly. Look at our nearest neighbor.. people riot, you see the Police Chief having a news conference. A plane drops from the sky, the NTSB provides details. Not to say politicians don't poke their way into things, after all they are publicity seekers. But factual info should come from the subject matter experts.

i'm not chinese and i feel embarrassed by this sum of money.. maybe a typo in the cable from Bejing and was supposed to be $500k?

These tings always go deeper than they appear. Each side gives bits and pieces of information to put them in the most favorable light. Management has to cover government and the Union sniffs opportunity to move in for the kill on management. Politicians see it as campaigning material.. such is the nature of democratic society I suppose.

It's the same old story.. those replaced know best so that's why they were replaced and BEC is hundreds of millions in debt.. I suspect the real issue is money isn't being paid out hand over fist to the Union and election buddies so that's the source of the noise. Miller says the last hurricane was worse than this.. must be living in a different Bahamas. His own boss said the destruction is hundreds of millions greater than Joaquin... he figures power should have been on in 2-3 days.. must be frustrationspeaking coz I remember earlier this same decade having to move to a hotel for 4 days when my power was off after a storm passed so I don't know what he is talking about.

some merit to John's comment, but i think most who suffered losses were likely uninsured, since too many weren't even paying their mortgages so judge home insurance hurricane coverage, as costly as it is. further, government borrowing (since we always had governments that did not see the wisdom of having a disaster fund) will rise in a big way. while that money will find its way to merchants, the question still remains how will that borrowing be repaid. perhaps VAT may have to be 15% after all or we can have a hurricane tax with a sunset provision (maybe 3 years) to cover this one situation.

need to be careful with these 'knee-jerk' responses. can give rise to badly written laws which may be abused in future for other purposes.. what this experience does highlight is the impotence of our legislative bodies.. not a single worthwhile piece of law-making is discussed proactively.. always need a crisis of some kind to trigger a response..

i dont know when we will ever accept that government aka taxpayers can't possibly pay for every damn distress that happens, whether natural or man-made.. regarding infrastructure i would ask.. any studies done to determine how building design/construction may have been an issue and what improvements can be made going forward? all those damaged roads washed out, maybe reroute vulberable segments or build concrete barriers to mitigate subsurface erosion? if we dont take this approach, we are doomed to keep spending money we dont have to fix the same things each time a storm comes by. government ever assess feasability of insurance for buildngs versus self-insurance?

the big question here is how effectively is Civil Aviation monitoring these people's maintenance and training? is it free of government interference? for such a small country, the accident rate is awfully high, probably matching those African countries we typically use as the banner toters of incompetence..

what a waste of public funds.. just another example of why we are $7.0bn in debt . how,come they didn't evacuate all bahamian students from the US when the cops started shooting all the blacks.. surely soneone must have been concerned about their safety..