Locked Out and Left Behind: Exuma
Locked Out and Left Behind: Exuma
Researcher ✔️
Michael Elijah Muhammad Clare
The Heartless Banking Crisis Plaguing the People of Exuma
Under the relentless midday sun on Great Exuma, an elderly grandmother steps onto the asphalt of Queen’s Highway. With swollen ankles, leaning heavily on her wooden walking stick, she embarks on a grueling two-mile journey. She is not walking for leisure; she is walking to survive. It is the time of the month when her National Insurance Board (NIB) pension is deposited—the meager lifeline meant to buy her groceries, clear her utility bill, and purchase vital blood pressure medication.
Every step forward is fueled by necessity. But when she finally arrives at the entrance of the Marina at Emerald Bay—sweat-drenched, exhausted, and clutching her bank card—she is met not with relief, but with cold, unyielding rejection.
A security guard stops her at the gate. She is told she cannot enter. She cannot pass. She cannot access the Scotiabank automated teller machine (ATM) sitting just a short distance away on the property.
She stands in disbelief, her hands trembling as tears well in her eyes. She is not a trespasser; she is a lifelong Bahamian citizen trying to access her own hard-earned money.
Yet, this grandmother is far from alone. Day after day, scene after heartbreaking scene unfolds at that gate. Elders, workers, mothers with young children in tow, and hardworking residents arrive with hope, only to be turned away in utter humiliation and despair.
A Community Cut Off:
The Critical Lifeline of Northern Exuma
For residents living on this side of Exuma, the ATM at the Marina at Emerald Bay is not a luxury or an afterthought—it is an essential public lifeline. In a Family Island community where public transportation is scarce and traveling over twenty miles into George Town is costly and burdensome, having localized banking access is the difference between putting food on the table and going hungry.
Reliable cash access sustains local commerce, fishermen, domestic workers, small vendors, and families living paycheck to paycheck. Yet, the banking infrastructure across the island has collapsed into a state of shameful neglect.
The BTC Scotiabank ATM has been broken and out of service for over two and a half months, abandoned without urgency.
Scotiabank’s two main machines on the island have failed to operate, leaving the public starved of basic banking services.
Now, the only functioning Scotiabank ATM in the vicinity—located at the Emerald Bay property—has been locked behind gates, with local Bahamians barred from using it.
Corporate Greed vs. Community Dignity
How does a multi-million-dollar corporate giant become so detached and heartless that it denies the very people of the host island access to basic financial services?
Because the resort is undergoing redevelopment, renovations, and rebranding, everyday Bahamians are treated as inconveniences rather than stakeholders. While corporate boardrooms boast about massive hundred-million-dollar transformations, lavish suites, and private marinas, the elderly woman down the road cannot even pull fifty dollars from an ATM machine without being treated like a security threat.
This cold lockout proves a painful reality: when corporate interests and bottom-line profits reign supreme, the basic dignity, health, and welfare of the local population are cast aside. To use an essential service as leverage, or to shut the gates in the faces of vulnerable citizens who built the very foundation of this island, is an absolute disgrace.
A Direct Call to Action: Fix It or Move It
The people of Exuma have had enough. We demand accountability, immediate intervention, and common decency.
1.) Scotiabank and Area Representative Chester Cooper must step in immediately to end this chronic, unacceptable banking failure and restore fully functional banking services across Exuma.
2.) The property owners and resort management must immediately open unrestricted public access to the ATM during daylight hours so residents and pensioners are no longer turned away at the gates.
3.) If corporate entities refuse to welcome the public onto the premises, move the machine entirely. Relocate the ATM immediately out of private property and place it into a secure, accessible public location along the main road where every citizen can access their money with pride and without permission.
Access to one’s own money is a fundamental right, not a corporate privilege. It is time for the powers that be to stand up for the elders, the workers, and the families of Exuma and end this injustice once and for all.
Page Reply:
This company is clearly heartless, and doesn’t give two pinches of puppy shit about the citizens of Exum, is what one senior citizen said at the security gate after being denied entry to use the ATM TO COLLECT HIS PENSION.
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