THE Caribbean region has gone through a difficult 16 months based on the pandemic and more recently the La Soufriere Volcano in St. Vincent. These trying times have cast serious concerns throughout the world, causing citizens to rethink their daily lives and by extension their future. On the other hand, we must take into account situations of that nature, which appear to crop up every one hundred years and ultimately, we simply have to adjust one way or another.
It takes an incredible amount of strength and perseverance to address these issues and unfortunately, the faint-hearted will bear the brunt of the fallout. On the political side, it takes an extremely strong and focused administration to deal with those issues and nations with the good fortune to have sound leaders in place are the ones which are likely to survive the onslaught.
Here at home, we have had our ups and downs, but two areas which we as a people need to address, are, firstly, our decision in taking the vaccine and secondly, not dropping our guard in enforcing social distancing and avoiding large clusters.
These responsibilities remain in our hands, not those of any government. On the other hand, we as a people must face the reality of inoculation in light of the requirements from our tourism providers who are insisting that our frontline workers, especially those within the Tourism Sector, do what is necessary in maintaining international requirements. It is a tough decision for persons who are entitled to their rights, but when airlines are making it mandatory for passengers to be inoculated, what are our options.
On the more positive side, we need to recognize the major decisions by President Biden regarding his 2 trillion-dollar injection into the US economy which resulted in the rehiring of thousands of persons within the airline industry. It also resulted in every aircraft grounded during the pandemic to be operational by April 30th 2021, including the training of pilots and servicing of the aircraft which were moth-balled.
Our tourism industry therefore, needs to be prepared for the business likely to unfold thereafter.