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NASSAU, The Bahamas, (CMC) - The main Opposition Progressive Liberal Party (PLP) says if it wins the next general elections it will scrap immediately the travel health visa requirement, even as the Government announced that 300,000 visas had been issued during the first five months of the year.
"The travel visa is an unnecessary tax imposed by the FNM [Free National Movement] Government on Bahamian families and businesses when they can least afford it," the PLP said in a statement, adding that it "does not believe Bahamians should be charged to travel within their own country, nor should Bahamians be charged to return home after travelling abroad.
"Because any testing or insurance requirements related to COVID may be kept in place as needed without the travel visa, there is no purpose for the visa that justifies the additional cost burden. Indeed, many Bahamians travelling from one island to another already report being asked to show their negative COVID test in addition to showing their travel visa."
The PLP said it would also end the travel visa for visitors, stating that "at a time when our economy is still in very serious trouble, the travel visa makes our tourism product less competitive".
The Opposition party noted that travellers visiting Barbados, Jamaica, Turks and Caicos, St Lucia, St Kitts, the Dominican Republic, or any number of other Caribbean destinations, are not required to purchase a travel visa for each family member on top of other testing and insurance costs.
Tourism and Aviation Minister Dionisio D'Aguilar told Parliament last week that the statistics show the tourism sector was bouncing back, with the country issuing nearly 300,000 Bahamas Travel Health Visas to visitors to enter the Caribbean Community (Caricom) country over the first five months of this year
"Everyone sees it. The airports are getting busier, the marinas up and down The Bahamas have never been busier. The occupancy levels in the hotels are improving and, most importantly, the tens of thousands of Bahamians who were furloughed as a result of this pandemic are slowly being called back to work," D'Aguilar said as he outlined the benefits of the recovery.
"More tourists means more jobs, more jobs means more income, and more income means an improvement in your quality of life," D'Aguilar told the Parliament debating the national budget.
D'Aguilar said officials at the Bahamas Travel Health Visa Unit are currently processing 6,000-8,000 health visa requests daily, and that the only way officials can process so many applications on a daily basis is to be constantly fine-tuning their technology.
In its statement, the PLP said that it was also disputing claims by the Ministry of Tourism that the airlines forced them to adopt the travel visa.
"Bahamians can judge for themselves whether this is believable, given the large number of Caribbean countries who never required a travel visa and nonetheless experienced no trouble with international airlines flying passengers in and out," the PLP said.