Commodore of the Royal Bahamas Defence Force, Dr. Raymond King appeared at a press briefing at the Office of the Prime Minister on Thursday where he addressed the deployment of officers to Haiti.
Recently the unrest in Haiti resulted in approximately 3500 inmates escaping from prison. King told reporters that a southern blockade to protect the southern border of The Bahamas is ongoing. “We have dedicated resources to our blockade comprised six surface assets, one aircraft and total force strength of some one hundred and twenty persons at this time.”
According to Dr. King, interdictions of Haitian migrants is down compared to the same period last year. He said, “the absolute numbers is 140 vs 1,055. And even amongst those 140 Haitian nationals more than 75% of those persons were either Haitian nationals who were intercepted trying to enter the United States of America either from New Providence, Grand Bahama and Bimini.”
The Commodore also informed that officers set for deployment as part of a peacekeeping mission led by Kenya have completed training with the Canadian force is complete with more training schedule for this month in Jamaica. King also spoke to the role Bahamian officers will play in the mission, “a large contingent of our members would be members onboard our vessels deployed for three to four month periods and whereby we’ll conduct those northern coastal patrols off the Haitian coast. And if we are able to have Haitian ship rider embedded along their littoral as opposed to being involved in the security operations in Haiti itself.”
To date there has been no timeline announced for when officers will be deployed.
