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Last Updated: Feb 10, 2012 - 12:07:20 PM |
Press Statement
By
Progressive Liberal Party
Stadium Opening cost escalates as PMH Ambulance Services Deteriorates
February 3rd 2012
The Progressive Liberal Party has noted the government’s stated intention to have a significant celebration to formally open the new stadium in the near future. How can the proposed level of spending for one day be justified when Bahamians lives are been seriously place at risk when EMS ambulance at Prince Margaret Hospital has been allowed to fall to pieces?
We know that this event is intended to play a major role in the launch of the Free National Movement’s election campaign. Fine, we understand the role “politricks” will play, and shall deal with that on the “stump”.
Our concern fellow Bahamians is the extravagant expenditure tied to this opening. The Prime Minister has been trotting around opening everything, and these opening ceremonial costs are becoming intolerable.
We all like a good party, but it ought not to come at the expense of our struggling Bahamian brothers and sisters. After all is said and done, our national debt is well on the way to five billion dollars which would represent a per capita debt of $16,666.00 for every man, woman and child.
It is cruel and insensitive for the government to be splashing our tax dollars around while our people are seriously challenged to obtain critical ambulance services, to find food to eat, shelter to sleep, pay BEC, or satisfy any of their other commitments. Just this week our worst fears were confirmed when we learned that there has been an 83% increase in the number of families that live on less than $5,000.00 per year.
Yet with all of the foregoing, and unemployment rate of almost 20%, Ingraham’s Minister Charles Maynard asserts that an expenditure of almost one million dollars is not an extravagance. That silliness is akin to Nero fiddling while Rome burns. Bahamians cannot eat the stadium, nor can it shore up our communal safety nets!! The FNM simply does not get it.
The PLP calls upon the government to pull back, and to have a soft opening. We urge them, instead, to spend that money on programs to heal, assist, empower our youth and the needy in our Bahamaland and provide a modern ambulance service in the Bahamas.
The PLP urges the FNM government to put the vital interest of the Bahamian people first, not “things”.
© Copyright 2012 by thebahamasweekly.com
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