Shanty town demolition will begin ‘this year’ – Bell” – The Tribune

Excerpt from this article; “LABOUR and Immigration Minister Keith Bell said he thinks the government will move to demolish shanty towns sometime this year.

The minister was asked during a recent interview about a timeline for when the government will move to raze the illegal structures now that a Supreme Court injunction barring such action has been lifted.

This comes as tensions over the issue continue to mount, with political hopeful Lincoln Bain and several of his supporters being stopped by police a little over a week ago as they tried to demolish homes in a shanty town off Bacardi Road.

Asked about the issue, Mr. Bell responded: “The main thing here is that this is a country, and I’ve repeated this before, this is a country of law and order. Everything has to be done in decency and respect and in those shanty towns, we have three categories of persons.

“While we have the undocumented migrants we also have persons who have legal status here in the country and we have Bahamians living in those shanty towns. So the idea is that when we do go and move to demolish, we identify those Bahamians, and we ensure that they have some place to go, or we provide Social Services to them.

“And that is what I think we are seeking to achieve, that when we do go we have all our ducks lined up and there is no push back. And we ensure that once we go in there and we clear the shanty towns that we ensure that there is no rebuilding of the shanty towns. So that is what I think we want to make sure we get it right — we only have one bite at the apple. “

It would appear that New Day government is “kicking this can down the street”, as it pertains to this matter because when the courts put the injunction in place to prevent the pervious Free National Movement (FNM) from demolishing these homes, they objected basically on the same grounds that they seem to be pushing back today; “The main thing here is that this is a country, and I’ve repeated this before, this is a country of law and order. Everything has to be done in decency and respect and in those shanty towns, we have three categories of persons.”  One thing to date that this New day government has not proven is that the previous administration was not about to carry out the process in a decent and humane manner and also but they have proven that they have wasted a lot of time attempting to prove that the manner in which the previous administration was going to carry out the process was unlawful; they owe the country an apology for setting this movement back by years by not standing with Bahamians as they attempted then, to begin to mitigate the proliferation of these unsafe and illegal communities.

So now, again the New Day government promises action; because according to the prime minister; “PRIME Minister Philip Davis said he will not at this time or ever support a House of Assembly select committee on immigration, calling it unnecessary and questioning the motivation for the committee itself” – The Tribune, basically saying that the time for talk is over and now it is time for action – well Mr. Prime Minister, we await the action but this hollow sound of that empty tin can being kicked along the halls of parliament is extremely deafening.

Progressive Liberal Party fails for one reason, it is their nature.

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