First published in The Tribune on Friday, May 23, 2008 under the byline, Young Man's View.
OVER the last 35 years, Bahamasair has proven to be a financial albatross around the necks of Bahamian taxpayers and nothing more than a failed government experiment.
In the past, the national airline has been embroiled in scandal about the discrepancies with, and/or unavailability of financial reports which showed that the carrier has been pillaged by some “tiefin”, unscrupulous employees who pocket airfares and freight funds, and arrange free trips for friends and family members.
The national flag carrier has become synonymous with tardiness, delays, lost luggage, persons being “bumped” off flights to accommodate the relatives and associates of aircraft employees and horrendous customer service.
Visitors and locals alike, who have experienced and complained about the crummy service provided, have modified the airline’s logo to reflect its reputation of belatedness to state—“if you have time to spare, fly Bahamasair.”
Because of the oil crisis in the 1970s, when British Airways and other major airlines discontinued flights, the then government decided to establish Bahamasair on June 18, 1973, following its acquisition of Out Island Airways and Flamingo Airlines. From the onset, the airline was faced by financial woes, second-rate maintenance services and a feebly configured setup that continues to plague it to this day. During the 1980s, Bahamasair unsuccessfully attempted to expand its routes to include Philadelphia, Washington DC and Newark. By 1989, their experiment with flights to these north-eastern US routes were unprofitable and futile, even though they have developed a niche market at several Florida-based routes and have incorporated regional routes (eg, Havana).
In almost 35 years, Bahamasair has been grossly mismanaged and has astoundingly had 20 general mangers in that time. These days, due to the proliferation of private aircraft servicing the islands, the argument that Bahamasair provides essential services to the islands is no longer germane and shows that the further usage of taxpayers’ monies to underwrite a failed enterprise is no longer warranted.
According to the last audited financial statements of Bahamasair Holdings Limited, the company incurred a net loss of $19,919,242 for the year ending June 30, 2006, and has had significant recurring losses that, up to the aforementioned date, had left the airline with a mounting deficit of $397, 989,377. Furthermore, as of June 30, 2006, the airline’s liabilities were in excess of its total assets by $70,006,867.
In the 2007/2008 Budget, Bahamasair was once more subsidised by taxpayers’ and yet again this year when the government allocated $11.3 million in supplementary funds to the carrier during its mid-year budgetary exercise. Bahamasair has always been an over dependent burden that relies on its government subsidy to cover expenses—ranging from hanger repairs, ground handling charges, engine maintenance, landing gear repairs and medical insurance—and looks to continue being that way.
It is past due that Bahamasair outsource less profitable routes to smaller, local carriers and instead refocus its attention on more profitable domestic and international routes. How is it profitable to continue sending DASH 8 aircraft from Nassau to Crooked Island or Freeport to Fort Lauderdale with 15 people?
During my travels via Bahamasair, I’ve encountered scowling, discourteous ticket agents who seem too comfortable in their government jobs to care for customers. While attempting to buy a ticket several months ago, I had to “raise hell” in order to nudge a ticket agent along, as he was engaging in frivolous chatter with friends at the ticket booth while passengers waited in line.
In a supposedly service oriented company, why should it take some bungling employees nearly an hour to sell tickets or check-in a handful of passengers? Why are certain lousy employees always on the phone or chattering away without any recognition of waiting customers? What's more, when flights are delayed, I have found that Bahamasair employees would rather congregate and gossip at ticket counters instead of catering to the concerns of frustrated travellers.
Currently, the national airline is over-saturated with employees and used as a cesspool for political cronies. In order to reduce Bahamasair’s operating costs and prepare the airline for privatisation, a serious downsizing exercise must be undertaken.
Admittedly, although Bahamasair is plagued by several setbacks, it has a near perfect safety record, highly-trained pilots and a first-class website. However, its time we cash in on whatever little capital the airline has left and follow Guyana’s and Trinidad’s lead and sell our government’s failed aviation experiment to local or international investors, while also considering becoming a part of a regional airline service.
Privatization of Bahamasair will undoubtedly reduce the public service and our national debt, free up monies for government services, improve their efficiency, foster competition and lead to a general sense of dependability and satisfaction among travellers.
Shane Gibson, the former Minister of Immigration/Housing who resigned amidst the shameful controversy involving his 21-day fast tracking of the late Anna Nicole Smith’s residency permit and the local/international hoopla about their chummy relationship, has threatened to table a list of sweethearts involved with FNM MPs during the upcoming Budget debate. In a weird twist of fate, Mr Gibson claims that in the wake of the Anna Nicole scandal, he “took the liberty of having private investigators check on various persons in office just to determine what it is they’re doing.” What a strange chap!
Since the PLP was ousted from office, it has been disclosed that the incoming government met no funds to fix and repair “defective” houses, funds were unavailable to complete unfinished houses and there weren’t any resources available to obtain land ownership or secure conveyances and mortgages.
While Mr Gibson is pretending to be Inspector Gadget, maybe he could answer a few questions:
If Housing ran so smoothly under you, why did most of the recently collected $12.3 million in received conveyances have to be used to pay for outstanding debt accrued during your administration’s term in office? Why were 86 houses just rotting in an incomplete state and another 40 supposedly completed houses without infrastructural installations which prohibited people from occupying them?
Why were people living in hundreds of houses without conveyances or mortgages?
Were those people who were living rent free for months/years political cronies? How is it that both the Bahamas Mortgage Corporation and the Ministry of Housing were broke? And, why were three houses given to people as gifts that required no mortgage payments or rent? Why were 40 houses mortgaged without insurance?
While the Golden Gates MP is at it, the general public would also wish for him to name the sweethearts of the PLP members—whether male or female! And, since Mr Gibson is naming names, should that be taken as an indication that he is truly willing to put himself on such a high moral pedestal which also leaves him open to criticism and accusations?
While a list of FNM sweethearts would make for salacious, water cooler gossip, Mr Gibson should answer these questions, and in the Bahamian vernacular, also “talk dat!”
On Wednesday, Tribune columnist Larry Smith took an exchange we had out of the ‘blogosphere’ with reference to my previous column on the price of food, and claimed in his column that I had said that the government had slighted Bahamian agriculture but was also “completely overlooking the potted history (that he spoke of in his column).”
Mr Smith should know that as an historian myself, I did no such thing!
Larry Smith knows that although previous governments engaged in the BARC agricultural experiment, no government has heavily invested in our agricultural sector but has instead dilly-dallied and wanted to be fed by international producers. For many years, consecutive governments have pursued an ill-advised singular economic model that is reliant on foreign investment—tourism and the financial sector—while slighting agricultural development as if it was not a priority.
While I recognise that the Bahamas Agricultural Research Training and Development Project did fail, we must recognise that that was it also unsuccessful because of a tendency of the new middle-class (back then) to prefer anything foreign and shun Bahamian-made products, political interference, and government incompetence.
These days, Bahamians are steadily beginning to show an appreciation for local goods and an understanding of the dire circumstances we now face.
I have never suggested that the Bahamas solely feed itself. I know of no country that can survive on its own without outside assistance or trade or relations—not even Cuba. I invite Mr Smith to assess the monies budgeted for farming over the past ten or 20 years compared to the budgetary allocation of neighboring countries that show a greater interest in developing this sector for the obvious reasons.
Instead of cynically preaching doom and gloom, hopefully Mr Smith would propose some ideas for economic diversification and encourage young persons interested in farming, particularly since farming—free from government management—can be fairly successful here, for eg the Hatchet Bay Plantation that flourished before a government takeover.
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