Minister for Grand Bahama, the Hon. Ginger Moxey expressed her pleasure with the return of Grand Bahamians to the island as its economy rebounds.

Moxey told ZNS News she has been encouraging Grand Bahamians to return home for the past two years. Residents left the island seeking opportunities elsewhere after a prolonged economic downtown which included extensive damage from multiple hurricanes including Hurricane Dorian in 2019.

As Grand Bahamians return to the island it is creating a human resource shortage at the businesses where they sought work on other islands. Moxey said, “we have heard from some individuals, especially on some of the private cays, that they’ve been saying that with all of the development happening here Grand Bahamians are resigning and returning home and so I guess that creates another issue.”

With several major projects in various stages of development such as Carnival’s Celebration Key, which recently employed 600 workers, the question of having enough human capital arises. The minister said, “one of the questions that’s always posed to me by developers is with all of the development going on right now will be have the capacity to be able to, you know, sustain what’s going on and that’s why I made the clarion call. I knew that today would come and that’s why I started to encourage Grand Bahamians to return home.”