I wish to address a number of issues relating to foreign affairs from the PLP’s perspective and particularly as it relates to statements made by the Minister of Foreign Affairs Brent Symonette in his budget statement in the House of Assembly on Thursday 12th June. I am afraid that the Minister has been materially and badly misinformed on how various matters developed during my term in office. It is unfortunate that one year after coming to office, a number of matters are still being blamed on the PLP, when even if they were correct in assigning blame, the FNM has been in a position for twelve months to correct the situation.
You will also see that in a number of instances in the minister’s statement, a very deliberate rewriting of history has led the minister to grave errors of fact. He ought to reexamine his position and be properly and truthfully informed otherwise he will find himself falling short in so many areas if he continues to accept uncritically bad advice and information. It is a matter which I think generally is of concern to all of those who served under the PLP in the previous administration.
The feeling is that in some cases, some individuals who served under us have developed a convenient political memory in the face of the FNM coming to power and are misleading FNM ministers who are all too anxious to accept uncritically misleading, bad information. Ministers’ speeches are too often infused with blaming language without foundation. My advice to these new FNM ministers is stop believing your own propaganda.
I address the following specifically in the Minister’s statement (in italics):
Symonette -
THE WEBSITE OF THE MINISTRY OF FOREIGN AFFAIRS
Mr. Speaker,
At this juncture, I wish to comment on another
source of frustration which has been voiced in this Honourable House during
contributions by the Honourable Member of Parliament for Fox Hill. He has
lamented shortcomings of the Ministry’s website. However, I have been advised
that while he is to be commended for the establishment of the Ministry’s
website, he did not accept the technical advice to proceed with deliberate
haste. This is the genesis of the website’s failing. However, Mr. Speaker
the Ministry is working actively with the Data Processing Unit in the Ministry
of Finance, the Government’s expert IT manager, in order to review, revamp,
standardize, with a view to upgrading, ensuring a user-friendly status,
and, with full incorporation into the Country’s IT identity, transformed
into a "Bahamas.gov.bs" address.
The use of the oxymoron “deliberate haste” is particularly unfortunate. The truth is that the Ministry of Finance and Foreign Affairs officials simply took too long to produce and respond to the request for the Ministry to develop a website. The Ministry was so backward when I came to office in 2002 that the Minister did not have a computer or internet access. I instructed officials to construct the website and bypass the government’s infrastructure because the government's IT platform was and I am advised remains unreliable. Fully 75 per cent of the time, the IT address of the government could not be accessed and its technicians did not have the ability to respond to complaints on a timely basis.
There is nothing wrong technically with the present website. My criticism in the House was not at its technical standards or its design, although both can be done much better, but rather at content.
The fact is the website is deficient content wise. The Ministry needs to have a proper department that deals with the website and information. The Ministry’s activities are not properly and fully published on the website. It is simply not providing content on the government's activities in foreign affairs. It needs updating and review on a constant basis.
For example, if you go to the site right now today, you will find that Alma Adams is still listed as the Consul General in Miami when Gladys Sands is now in post. Edison Bethel is still listed as Consul General In New York. Both these individuals left office last year. Also Soichi Yamada has been dead since October 2007 and his name is still there as the Honorary Consul for The Bahamas in Japan.
The website is the official face of the Ministry to the world but it is certainly treated as a step child. This was a problem during my entire term as Minister; there was not an appreciation of the PLP's view that the Ministry of Foreign Affairs was answerable to the Bahamian people. This myopia and insularity infected the culture at the Ministry; the view was that the Ministry was a closed technical shop reserved only for the initiated.
Symonette -
Mr. Speaker,
Efforts such as those that I have just highlighted,
directed at giving greater transparency to and enabling better monitoring
of the Ministry’s Budget are relevant to the query of the Honourable Member
from Fox Hill regarding a reduction focused on under Item No. 543131 on
Haiti. I wish to assure the Honourable Member, Mr. Speaker, that there
is no reduction in accommodation resources for the Embassy in Haiti. This
Item must be read in conjunction with Item Nos 301120 and 301210. In other
words, Mr. Speaker, accommodation in Overseas Missions is now being put
under specific related Items: rents (Officers; Chancery) and operational
expenses. Hence, in fact, the Embassy in Haiti has benefited from increase
rather than reductions when all related Items are viewed together.
While we are heartened to see that there has been no apparent lessening in the commitment to Haiti, the Minister has still not announced an Ambassador for Haiti which would be the real and tangible sign of a political commitment to Haiti, a country with which we have real issues to deal.
Symonette -
CURRENCY EROSION ISSUE
Mr. Speaker, as pointed out during the last Budget
Debate, the issue of Overseas Allowances has been an outstanding issue
for a long time with Foreign Service Officers. In posting Officers abroad
the Government needs to ensure that Officers are not disadvantaged by the
move. They are, therefore, provided with a variety of Allowances to offset
additional expenses when aboard. One issue of particular concern is the
loss in salary faced by some Officers because of the fluctuating exchange
rates. In ongoing efforts to resolve this problem, Mr. Speaker, the 2008
– 2009 Budget retains the $150,000 [Item No. 029701] allocated for the
conversion of overseas salaries in the 2007 – 2008 Budget. This figure
will again cover the conversions on transfer of overseas salaries and Allowances
to Missions in Countries with foreign currency fluctuation. My Ministry,
however, Mr. Speaker, in consultation with the Ministry of Finance, the
Central Bank and the other most effected Ministry, Tourism, are looking
at a more comprehensive, objective, fair and manageable mechanism to address
this serious shortcoming for Officers posted abroad, which is beyond their
control. Mr. Speaker, I wish to re-emphasize two of the characteristics
of the mechanism which is being aimed at under this Item: "objective" and
"fair"! I do so Mr. Speaker, because it has come to my attention that under
the former Administration, one Officer alone, in a Mission where at least
three other Foreign Service Officers were eligible for currency erosion
relief, received nearly fifty percent of this allocation under the last
Budget! In addition, there was and remains another Overseas Mission whose
eligible staffs significantly even more disadvantaged by currency fluctuation
erosion.
This was another vexing issue during my time but the facts
need again to be reexamined by the minister. He will find if he has
not found out already that if he does not exercise a certain impatience
nothing will get done in his Ministry. The office in Canada made
representations to me as Minister after they could get no redress from
the public service for relief. At the start of one officer’s term,
the Canadian dollar was 67 cents to the Bahamian dollar. By the time
the officer left, it was 1.05 Canadian to 1 Bahamian dollar. This
meant a severe hardship and decrease in spending power. I determined
that it was unfair and sought a policy to be generated by the public officials
to deal with it. They simply took too long, and could not themselves decide
what to do. In fact the same consultations about which the Minister now
speaks were the same excuses given why we could not proceed at the time
I was minister. The service appeared paralyzed by analysis. In the end,
I took other advice and developed a policy in the interim to address the
issue. It was a generic policy not designed for any individual or
mission. It is again up to the officials to ensure that all officers who
are due monies were paid. Public monies are not accessed or dispensed by
politicians. But what I recall is a disturbing lack of sensitivity
on the part of those who were public officials themselves who served overseas
for their fellow officers who were left serving overseas. They seemed
not to care what happened to their fellow officers while overseas.
Symonette -
BAHAMIAN STUDENT SUPPORT
Mr. Speaker,
It is one matter to take care of your legal and
moral responsibilities such as the protection of the remuneration of your
posted personnel. It is another matter to request your budget to subsidize
individuals outside of your budget even if they are your nationals. It
is very easy to dispense largesse with other people’s, even taxpayers’,
funds. It can be argued that student years should be some of the most,
creative years of an individual’s life, where challenges bring out the
best in terms of problem solving, thinking outside the box, and pursuing
multiple options. Mr. Speaker this is the position from which we come,
in respect of the concern expressed by the Honourable Member from Fox Hill,
that there was nothing in the Ministry’s budget to support Bahamian Student
Associations abroad.
The Minister and his officials are clearly not properly
informed about the remit of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. One
of the roles of the Ministry is to help and support Bahamians living abroad
including our students, Each year, the student associations from the University
of the West Indies in Mona Jamaica, in Cave Hill Barbados and at St. Augustine
in Trinidad would approach the Ministry for special funding to support
their Bahamas Week activities. In light of the Ministry’s role in
supporting Bahamians overseas, I set aside one thousand dollars for each
campus for their Bahamas Week activities. That amounts to a grand
total of 3,000. I hope that Bahamian students now see that even that
small amount has been taken away from them by this government for support
of their cultural activities to promote the Bahamas overseas. It
is another sign of a disturbing myopia and insularity on the part of the
FNM government.
Symonette -
PASSPORTS
Mr. Speaker
Before leaving the issue of passports, I wish to
state that the Pilot Phase has indeed proven its usefulness. I recognize
the many calls and correspondence which I and my staff have received, detailing
inconveniences, frustrations and lost resources. This has made the Ministry
painfully aware of the complexity of our mission and the over-exuberance
of our expectations to furnish you the Public, in a very short timeframe
we now recognize to be unrealistic, with a state of the art ID document,
encompassing state of the art security features.
Mr. Speaker,
There is enough blame to go around on all sides
but I shall restrict myself to the challenges faced by my Ministry and
the solutions being implemented as we speak.
Mr. Speaker,
We are looking at producing some 270,000 to 300,000
E-passports alone, with a staffing complement of forty-five. We are also
looking at a complex, technically-driven process, plagued by equipment
break-downs, and, uneven or ‘snail pace’ connectivity. We also have to
contend with the cultural uniqueness of our People. Yet, it is clear, all
solutions whether they be training, adjusted, longer hours, a shift system,
a customer service crash course, must depart from the acknowledgement that
we are in a partnership with you, the Public. Some of you have given us
practical suggestions, others your patience, despite everything. We have
not taken this lightly. Let me remind all, that The Bahamas is among the
first Countries in the world to place priority on such technologically
advanced security in this area of secure identification documents. As we
redouble unrelenting efforts to serve you, we encourage you, Colleagues
and the public, to partner with us, because we have the opportunity to
exemplify best practice in this important area, to the world!
At the time I made my statement in the House, I was not fully aware of the degree of the complaints by the public about their inability to get their new passports. People have since complained to me about having to wait on long lines to get access to the passport office. One person reported that she waited in the exposed heat for so long that she fainted. The report is that the office can only hold 80 people at a time. The issue of the passport requires the actual presence of an individual at the issuing station.
There is no word about when these passports will be issued from Freeport.
The word is that 40 entrance tickets are issued at the start of the day for Bahamian passport holders to get seats in the passport office and 40 for Certificates of Identity. The processing has taken long because the machines have broken down. In one case a new printer had to be brought in. The waiting time is now about four weeks from the time of application to receipt of the passport. Again, it is not usual for there to be rushing for new passports even though the new passport is not absolutely necessary unless your old passport has expired.
The important thing here is information. That is the problem, about which I was complaining, the way human beings are treated in the process. The Minister has now promised to redress this. I will do an inspection myself later in the week to see the actual physical conditions outside the office where I am told people start to queue as early as 5 a.m. in order to get a low number for entry into the building. Again the Ministry's public information systems are not what they should be and this includes the website that has no information about the availability or otherwise of passports.
SOUTH AFRICA
The Minister did not address whether the visa abolition
agreement between South Africa and ourselves has been concluded.
All major Caricom countries have such agreement. The Bahamas does
not. This is a matter that should be addressed.
ESCAPE OF CUBANS
There is a need to address fully the escape of the individuals
from the detention centre, and to say whether or not Cubans are being kept
in the detention centre for too long a period.