By NATARIO McKENZIE
Tribune Business Reporter
nmckenzie@tribunemedia.net
The Utilities Regulation and Competition Authority (URCA) lost nearly 30 per cent of its staff in 2016, its chief executive conceding this had impacted its ability to deliver on projects.
Stephen Bereaux, while speaking at the regulator's oral hearing on Wednesday night, cited employee attrition and the added responsibility of regulating the electricity sector as the primary challenges URCA faced in 2016. He described it as a "very busy and tumultuous year" for the regulator.
"Other than having to adapt to the electricity sector, in 2016 we lost almost 30 per cent of our staff through attrition fundamentally, and that created a significant change in our ability to deliver on the projects that we had identified, and also created a tremendous pressure for us to recruit new team members," said Mr Bereaux. "We have, as of now, replaced the staff that we lost and there is still more growing to do."
Mr Bereaux said the Electricity Act, which came into effect on January 28, 2016, "happened a bit sooner than we were aware of.
"What we had to embark on in 2016 was a quick and expedited foray into what we needed to do to regulate the sector," he added.
Mr Bereaux also noted that being a Nassau-based regulator had presented challenges for URCA.
"We are not a 100-200 person organisation, and one of the challenges is how do we meet expectations from these Out Islands," he said.
Mr Bereaux said URCA was aiming to increase accountability to the public by reviewing key performance indicators, and developing a set of indices to measure its regulatory impact. URCA is also looking to improve and increase its social media presence.
Mr Bereaux also noted that The Bahamas is getting set to host the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) conference, the Global Symposium for Regulators or (GSR-17) slated for July 11th-14th at The Atlantis, Paradise Island Resort. GSR-17. Mr Bereaux noted that the promotion of the information and communications technology (ICT) sector 'does not stop at our borders', adding that as a regulator and advisor to the government, URCA is responsible to implementing ICT policy and promoting it.
Comments
The_Oracle 6 years, 9 months ago
Has URCA developed any technical capabilities yet? Or are they basically still a glorified "rate setting and outage counting Bureaucracy"?
DaGoobs 6 years, 9 months ago
Whoa, you are going far Oracle and giving them more credit than they deserve. The people on the board have no clue about how to develop technical capability and as a consequence have pursued a course to promote friends, family and others. Any analysis of the so-called 30% staff attrition shows that they would have had little to do with impacting the organization's ability to deliver on projects. The real problem impacting the organization's ability to deliver on projects over the past 5 years has been a lack of leadership at the board and management level. The previous government got elected on a mandate that URCA had too much power that needed to be reduced. Consequently that is the path that the organization has pursued since 2012 and the quality and completion of projects since then has declined. URCA keeps using excuses such as the cellular liberalization and now the regulation of electricity have impacted its ability to complete projects. Not true. The timeframe for cellular liberalization was spelled out in the law by the Ingraham administration from the time of the sale of BTC in 2011 but URCA was not ready for it when it became possible in 2014 and further unnecessarily complicated matters. Then URCA knew that it would be regulating electricity from December 2015/January 2016 when the Christie administration enacted the Electricity Act but waited until late 2016 before advertising for the Director of Utilities and Electricity and did not appoint anyone until March 2017.
DaGoobs 6 years, 9 months ago
Instead of being open, transparent and accountable for its actions, URCA has become a secretive, closed-lipped organisation that hardly publicizes its activities. URCA fined BTC millions of dollars for power failures that was supposed to be paid to BTC's customers as compensation for lack of service but in a magnificent act of low-key misfeasance gave the money to NEMA. They have appointed/reappointed friends, family and others to the board but haven't made one announcement about it. You wouldn't know unless you looked it up on their helter-shelter website. They changed the law and instead of board members serving for a maximum of two terms before rotating off 3 years, they can now be appointed until they choose to come off, die or are removed for breach of the law. The staggering of terms of board members has gone by the wayside. URCA is so-called consulting the public on the draft Consumer Protection Plan of Bahamas Power & Light but other than publishing it on their website, the public has not gotten one word from URCA about how BPL will compensate them in the event of damage to appliances or what the timeframes are for new installations. While URCA is prohibited from regulating BPL's electricity rates for 5 years from 28th January 2016, it does not mean that URCA cannot regulate BPL in other areas. They were quick to jump down on BTC and fine them for power failures affecting the phone systems but BPL has almost daily and some days multiple power outages but not one peep from URCA about what it is doing or has done in the public's interest to regulate BPL on this issue. No fines, no disciplinary action, nothing but silence. URCA told us in its annual plan that it had outsourced its electricity regulation needs to foreign consultants so in that situation it should not have impacted their ability to complete projects in 2016 or even 2017. The board has lost its way and is only concerned about self-perpetuation for the salaries and benefits. Time to change that and focus on the people's interests with real regulation instead of excuses.
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