THE LAYOFFS IN THE PUBLIC SERVICE CONTINUE

Marvin Dames is quite the star of the FNM show these days.  He himself has been condemned judicially but refuses to go and the Prime Minister refuses to fire him.  His colleague Dr. Duane Sand is in a similar position.  He should resign or be dismissed.  In the mean time though, Dr, Sands refuses to pay the nurses at the Public Hospitals Authority their overtime.  He says there is a shortage of nurses and that some 400 may be needed at PMH but he is doing nothing to keep or recruit nurses by the way he is approaching their industrial relations issues.  Mr. Dames however cannot be outdone in the ability to double down in wrong doing and foul behavior.  Notwithstanding the pushback on the firing of eight senior police officers, he announced that senior officers of the Royal Bahamas Police Force have been laid off as well.  He says that he makes no apology for this.  He says it will continue.  When someone plays the role of a blind deaf and dumb ass you should say to them: “carry on smartly”.  We encourage the FNM to keep it up.  Pretty soon you will knock your foot up against the stone wall. Couldn’t happen to finer people.  The PLP’s Chairman Senator Fred Mitchell issued the following statement on the public sector layoffs:

Responding To Carl Culmer On The Political Divide In The Police Force

For Immediate Release

27 March 2019

So the Chairman of the FNM has suddenly discovered that there are no PLP or FNM policemen. He must be the only FNM leader who believes that because the evidence is that the FNM government has been systematically going through the Force and anyone who they perceive to be PLP or allies of former Commissioner of Police Ellison Greenslade is being sent home summarily.

The Prime Minister in his usual clumsy way sought to cover up this FNM misdeed by suggesting that this is all about officers who have long accumulated leave. The PLP has seen the list of those with accumulated leave and among them is the Commissioner of Police himself who has 58 weeks of leave. He remains on the job. So clearly it isn’t leave that is the issue.

The purges continue. Local government administrators perceived to be PLP are also being sent home. Last week, one was given 7 days to get out of the district even though he has a wife in the district and a minor child in school.

Six more are to go.

This comes off as the FNM as a brutal, nasty group of people who care not one wit for decency.

The fact is the police force is more divided than ever politically as a deliberate policy of the FNM. This is going to affect the Force’s reliability as a neutral arbiter in fighting crime and in guarding the ballot boxes when the elections come .

The PLP is very concerned about this.

We know this attitude stems from the top because when Marvin Dames was Assistant Commissioner of Police and was assigned to head up the security detail at the Lynden Pindling Airport. Instead of applying himself to the task, there were complaints coming from FNM Parliamentarians about his new assignment. The Government changed shortly thereafter and as soon as the FNM came to power he was reassigned.

So FNM Chairman don’t try to fool us.

The poet says what a tangled web we weave when first we practice to deceive.

End