PDM Incensed, Makes Tourist Board Demise an Election Issue

By Dana Malcolm 

Staff Writer 

#TurksandCaicos, April 21, 2023 – As the deadline for the entity’s shutdown approaches, the PDM is promising to publicize all the emails of the dissolution of the Tourist Board and ‘follow the money trail’ if they are elected in the next general election.

The promise came from Ezra Taylor, PDM National Chairman in a strongly worded letter rejecting the removal of staff whom he said had proved “they have what it takes to move the needle on tourism in our country in a substantive and meaningful way.”

Using the record tourism numbers as proof of his statement, Taylor slammed the PNP for stripping the country of the institution “without reason or explanation,” and disenfranchising locals while giving expats an opportunity to flourish in their stead.

“Unfortunately, in this contemporary era, in the year of our lord 2023, our very own elected leaders, primarily the Premier, his Minister of Tourism, and this PNP administration has without an iota of substantive reasoning, taken the Tourist Board out of local Turks and Caicos Islanders’ management. In an era when Turks and Caicos Islanders has never been more educated, more qualified, and more capable of ushering the tourism sector in the Turks and Caicos Islands into the regional juggernaut that it is, and can become, under their guidance, our government is boldly telling them they are not capable, despite them proving that they are repeatedly,” he said

He described the move as, an insult to the staff to not only fire them in the volatile economic climate but to “seriously consider hiring persons from competing markets to manage our Tourism Industry.”

“Would other regional tourism-based countries hire Turks and Caicos Islanders over their indigenous people to manage their tourism sector? I think we all know the answer to that question,” he contended.

Describing the move as indefensible he said, “We will also follow the money trail to see who benefits from the firing of the seventeen local TCI staff and installing Foreign Competitors to manage our No. 1 Tourism Industry.”