GUEST COMMENTARY
(EDITOR’S NOTE: This article was published on Facebook by Bahama Press and I decided to share it as a Guest Commentary for reasons that are explained in another Editor’s Note at the end of this article.)
NASSAU, Bahamas — Former Deputy Prime Minister Desmond Bannister ordered that his personal driver’s salary be increased to nearly $56,000 just a few months before the 2021 General Election, according to a letter obtained by the Gallery.
Prior to the increase, Bannister’s driver, Vaughn Evans, was making $47,650 a year along with a double increment of $1,650 to drive the then-minister of works around town.
However, on January 1, 2021, the driver’s salary was increased to $55,900. He also received $8,243 in back pay in September 2021 – days before the Free National Movement government was kicked out of office.
Evans was seconded to the Water and Sewerage Corporation (WSC) to become Bannister’s chauffeur after the FNM took office in 2017.
Prior to that, Evans worked as a meter reader at WSC. The interesting career move as Bannister’s personal driver came with a huge salary increase for Evans, who received a five-step promotion to the title of Assistant Supervisor.
However, the only thing he supervised was the steering wheel as he spent his days driving Bannister to and from Cabinet meetings, the House of Assembly and public functions.
Evans, a rabid FNM supporter, walked through WSC Headquarters bragging about the FNM’s landslide victory and his “come-up” from Meter Reader to Assistant Supervisor.
However, following the FNM’s embarrassing loss at the polls on September 16, Evans was shipped back to WSC.
The same coworkers he taunted are now laughing behind their desks as Evans cries about being victimized by the “New Day” government, which ordered him to report to his regular duties at WSC.
Though he is still on the job, he now has his employer in court fighting for a promotion that he didn’t earn but received as a political favor.
Employees are now marveling at the audacity of Evans’ legal battle for a position he did not earn.
Instead of driving Desmond Bannister, he is now driving colleagues up the wall with his incessant complaints.
(EDITOR’S NOTE: If the claims made in this article are correct, I am highly disappointed in Desmond Bannister. We are both from Stanyard, Andros, and I knew both of his parents – the late Horatio Bannister and Joyce Clarke Bannister — very well. In fact, Horatio Bannister was one of my teachers at Stanyard Creek All-Age School.
I also know Desmond very well, or at least I thought I did, until I wrote to him after Dr. Hubert Minnis and the FNM government decided to cruelly victimize me after my diplomatic appointment as Press, Cultural Affairs and Information Manager at the Embassy of the Bahamas in Wahington, D.C., was rescinded after after the FNM won the May 10, 2017, general election and became the government of The Bahamas.
As a veteran journalist, I wrote the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, headed by Minister Darren Henfield, to continue doing what I did in representing The Bahamas diplomatically on a contractual bases for $2,000 a month and my proposal was initially approved – according to the then Ambassador Sidney Collie – but I was later reliably informed that Prime Minister Dr. Minnis personally stopped it from being implemented.
Faced with eviction, I repeatedly appealed to my fellow Androsian Desmond Bannister — son of my teacher at Andros All-Age School and my good childhood friend, Joyce Clarke Bannister – to intervene with the Prime Miniter on my behalf, and I have yet to receive a response to any of my desperate emails.
To now read in this Bahamas Press article that he was squandering the “people’s money” paying his driver an exorbitant salary of $55,900 is an extremely bitter pill for me to swallow. Thanks to Almighty God that the Bahamian electorate had the good sense to elect the Progressive Liberal Party, led my current Prime Minister Philip Davis, as the new government of The Bahamas in the September 16, 2021, general election, and in the process remove Dr. Hubert Minnis, the worst Prime Minister in The Bahamas’ history, as leader of this country.
