Minister of Youth, Sports and Culture Neville Wisdom has categorised the Boxing Day Parade as a success, even though many sections of the $1 million bleachers went unfilled.<\/P><\/p>\n
“We’ve been able to accomplish a number of things,” he said. “We identified early in the Junkanoo season, 13 major problems in Junkanoo and we attempted to address 11 of them and I think we have been relatively successful in accomplishing all we have set out to do,” he said.<\/P><\/p>\n
There were no major incidents to report regarding the bleachers. The arrangement seemed to have gone smoothly, with many spectators praising the new arrangements.<\/P><\/p>\n
Mr. Wisdom has taken the brunt of public criticism aimed at the government for its decision to rent the costly bleachers.<\/P><\/p>\n
He was criticized by opposition members of parliament, including the Member for North Abaco Hubert Ingraham, for renting the foreign bleachers.<\/P><\/p>\n
According to Mr. Ingraham, Bahamians who previously carried out the work depended on that job to put a little extra money in their pockets around Christmas time.
<\/p>\n
There were some bleachers that did not fill up, as Ministry officials had expected. Although the bleachers along Rawson Square were filled, the sky box which cost $7,500 for a group of 20, was virtually empty. Some ticket holders were apparently not too pleased, with the arrangement.
<\/p>\n
Bleacher seating in section ‘F’ and ‘G’ on the western part of Bay Street – in the front of the old straw market site – were virtually empty along with bleachers in the area of CIBC on Shirley Street.<\/P><\/p>\n
Following the New Year’s Day Parade the bleachers will be returned to Canada.<\/P><\/p>\n
Mr. Wisdom maintains that the new bleachers provided spectators safety, security and comfort.<\/P><\/p>\n
“They are able to jump and bounce and enjoy themselves,” he said. “The FNM can say what they want to, but Junkanoo has gone to a new level.”<\/P><\/p>\n
Minister Wisdom said that it was too early to say how much money the Junkanoo events have raised so far.<\/P><\/p>\n
But he said, “at the end of the day the bleacher rental is not expected to cost Bahamian taxpayers’ one single penny.”<\/p>\n
By Tosheena Blair, The Bahama Journal<\/B><\/P><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Mr. Wisdom maintains that the new bleachers provided spectators safety, security and comfort.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"rop_custom_images_group":[],"rop_custom_messages_group":[],"rop_publish_now":"initial","rop_publish_now_accounts":{"facebook_10223285771444175_51037792744":""},"rop_publish_now_history":[],"rop_publish_now_status":"pending","footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-240155","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-headlines"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/240155","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=240155"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/240155\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":240929,"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/240155\/revisions\/240929"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=240155"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=240155"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=240155"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}