As the country bends under the weight of the global crisis, which has led to decreased tourism numbers and caused mass layoffs, the government has done very little to mitigate its impact, he says.
When asked how he would rate the government’s handling of the economic crisis, Dr. Nottage said it is "not very good."
Dr. Nottage said while he accepts that current global conditions are not the best right now, particularly for national development, he thinks the "government’s whole approach when it [assumed office] was wrong."
"I think that the decisions it made at that time have had an adverse impact on what’s happening in the country right now," he said.
"The various projects that were lined-up to be carried out were stopped, and what’s interesting about that is that many of them [the projects] that they said they would not proceed with, they are now proceeding with because they see the value of doing so."
Dr. Nottage said had the government gone ahead with earlier projects the unemployment level would not be where it currently is.
"The funding that was available then is certainly not available now. That is an important thing," he said. "Secondly, the government made some decisions to displace people from their jobs, which have had an adverse effect, not only on the people who were displaced, but also on the remaining people in the civil service and on the departments in which those people functioned."
"Thirdly, I think that some of the decisions that are being made appear to me to be [done so] in the interest of supporters of the government, as opposed to the best interest of the country as a whole and the one that I would like to draw some attention to is [this whole] issue of the downtown container port."
Dr. Nottage said now is the time for the government to maximize the involvement of ordinary Bahamians in the development of the country.
"We cannot continue to have the same people being the recipients of government contracts, government projects and ignoring or denying the ‘small man’," he said. "This is an opportunity for us to enable them to develop themselves."
"Rather than the government spending money directly, the government really needs to do something about developing people in the business sector, particularly small businesspersons and enable Bahamians to develop the skills [that would help them to become] self-employed.
Dr. Nottage said he is still unclear about how the government’s National Training Programme would work.
"The government keeps talking about the 1,000 unemployed persons who they are going to put into this training program, but it can’t seem to define what this training program is going to be, what areas it’s going to be in, who is going to teach it, where it’s going to be taught, and how it’s going to get people to stay in the program for 15 weeks. When the 15 weeks are over, what are these people going to do," he said.
"In a very real way, I think [the government] is just throwing money after things, hoping to assuage people’s complaints, but not really looking beyond. The Bahamas is not only New Providence. We have to look at what’s happening in the Family Islands. I’ve been to Eleuthera and Bimini in recent times and I’m very concerned about people’s demeanor, people’s outlook, people’s expectations."
Dr. Nottage also noted that the government is not properly consulting with the Bahamian public.
"I heard on the radio that the government is [proposing] a 10-year educational plan that it wants everybody to buy into. "I’m hearing this on the radio. I haven’t seen any plan," he said.
"If you want me to support a plan, the least you could do is involve me in developing that plan. Everything is ad hoc. They say they are going to try to employ teachers who do not have a [police] record, [teachers] that they say may not be involved in child abuse or sexual abuse of children in schools and that they’re going to use the police to make this determination. These seem to me to be a hodgepodge of policies that are being thrown out."
Dr. Nottage said the government does not seem to be serious about a number of policies.
"I had a debate with the prime minister recently in the House of Assembly about agricultural policies. The FNM government says for the very first time that it supports the development of agriculture, but then, the policies that it is putting in place are counterproductive to agriculture. Why do I give them a low grade, it’s because of things like that," he said.
- Austin DWI - New York DWI