Opposition Leader Dr. Hubert Minnis has accused the government of seeking to develop the former Island Palm Hotel in Freeport into administrative offices to create jobs for Progressive Liberal Party (PLP) supporters.
Minnis also said yesterday there has been no evidence to support the increase in homelessness in Grand Bahama alleged by Deputy Prime Minister Philip Davis on the recent campaign trail.
"Are they now saying they are changing the Island Palm to administrative offices, knowing that a lot of renovations are needed to provide jobs to their people and cronies?" Minnis asked.
A week after Davis revealed that plans were in motion to use the property as a temporary homeless shelter, Prime Minister Perry Christie announced the government's revised plans.
Last Friday, Christie claimed the government took its queue from the response the plan had received from Grand Bahamians.
The Ingraham administration acquired the 156-room three-story property adjacent to the Rand Memorial Hospital at $1.9 million to develop Grand Bahama's healthcare product and a medical tourism market.
"The stories about people living in cars, people living on the beaches when we have that property sitting there doing nothing," Davis told reporters in Grand Bahamas.
"We are looking now at the possibility of bringing some of those persons off the beach, out of the cars, placing them there on a temporary basis until we can find something more suitable for them - either jobs and then moving them away from there."
Minnis questioned whether the deputy prime minister and prime minister were just "hawking whatever sounds good politically" instead of driving national development.
He suggested that the government abandoned its original plans because the level of homelessness that Davis claimed during the campaign trail was inaccurate.
"They were preaching throughout the campaign that there is an increase in homelessness in Grand Bahama, but show me the data for those people who are supposedly living on the beach and otherwise, and the individuals living in cars," Minnis said.
"If Mr. Davis has any interest in the homeless he has not made any statement as to what he plans to do for them."
Minnis advised the government to increase the budget for social services to support Grand Bahamians faced with financial challenges, instead of abandoning the plan to expand the Rand.
He said the government is ignoring Grand Bahama's health sector and its future development.
The acquisition of Island Palm came shortly after $9 million in renovation at the Rand.
"They are not using the building to address the problems that the Rand Memorial Hospital is faced with today and those problems will continue to escalate once we continue to have problems with chronic non-communicable diseases and the incidence of violent crime," Minnis said.
"There is already a shortage of beds. With us expanding and giving the Rand the most modern facility in their institution the plan was for a lot of the patients awaiting surgery in New Providence [to] have it done in Grand Bahama, therefore developing health domestic tourism.
"With that facility you would also be able to expand health tourism to the Caribbean and elsewhere."

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