The Tribune

By NATARIO McKENZIE

Tribune Business Reporter

nmckenzie@tribunemedia.net

The Bahamas Electricity Corporation’s (BEC) former chairman has again slammed the utility over “astronomical” electricity bills, warning the Government that unless consumers are given a break “they won’t gets a break” come election time.

Leslie Miller was speaking after Bahamas Power & Light (BPL) said it was continuing to experience supply issues in New Providence following an island-wide outage on Tuesday night.

In a statement yesterday, BPL said: “A major underground cable fault is to blame for the initial outage that caused a complete shutdown of BPL’s generation, transmission and distribution networks on the island.

“To quickly restore power to customers, BPL has put in place temporary measures, but its efforts are centred on locating the damaged underground cable and carrying out repairs immediately. BPL anticipates that once repairs are complete, its services should return to normal.”

    Mr Miller yesterday continued to blast BPL, saying: “What I don’t understand is the summer is over, the peak season is over now, and we still have this kind of thing going on.

“I’d advise them to leave these poor people alone and give them a break on these astronomical light bills. The corporation belongs to the Bahamian people. The Government needs to appreciate that with elections coming, if they don’t give the people a break they won’t get a break. That’s how it is.”

Mr Miller argued that the failure to secure a long-term fuel contract when oil prices were low has placed a greater burden on consumers.

“They refused to go out and secure a long-term contract for fuel. Fuel is now back up to almost $100 a barrel. They are still paying double what we would have paid had we signed a contract,” he argued.

“You shouldn’t turn people off in these difficult times. How are they supposed to survive? If they can pay half let them pay half. You have to understand that these are some very tough times.

BPL recently denied it was short-changing Bahamians by hiking electricity prices. Many residents have complained about their higher-than-normal electricity bills in Hurricane Matthew’s aftermath.