The Tribune

By NEIL HARTNELL

Tribune Business Editor

nhartnell@tribunemedia.net

The winning landfill bidder yesterday pledged to "sign-off" on the contract award by Monday and begin talks on commercial terms with the Government in the same week.

Kenwood Kerr, Providence Advisors' chief executive, told Tribune Business: "The Providence/Waste Resources Development Group (WRDG) is aggressively trying to conclude the sign-off of the award letter, and have that in by Monday.

"Then we will organise a team to start negotiations with the Attorney General in the same week, subject to their availability. We're pretty excited. The whole team is good to go. We have some stuff we think will make a real difference."

Mr Kerr's comments came as long-time critics of the New Providence landfill's health and environmental hazards hailed the consortium's selection as preferred bidder as "a step in the right direction", although some raised concerns over the Government's transparency.

Branville McCartney, the former Democratic National Alliance (DNA) leader, whose home and wife's school have frequently been impacted by the landfill's fires, expressed hope that the landfill's outsourcing to private management meant he would "no longer have to leave my home at night".

"That was good news," he said of the award to Providence/WRDG. "It's a long time coming. I'm hoping, trusting and praying that they would do what they say they're going to do.

"I am thankful that for the last few months we haven't had any fires. It's only been one for the year, if I'm not mistaken. We certainly need to get it resolved and move forward. We've been affected by it all around for 15-plus years."

Mr McCartney expressed hope that Providence/WRDG would fare better than Renew Bahamas, the company selected by the former Christie administration to operate the landfill, but which walked away in Hurricane Matthew's aftermath in October 2016.

"That was a waste of time and money," he told Tribune Business. "Knowing some of the persons involved in Providence/WRDG I think it's going to be a positive outlook. I was very much encouraged to see where we have Bahamians coming together for this initiative.

"It would be good to see in other things Bahamians coming together to be owners of part of their country. Hopefully we will see the end of this vexing problem, although we don't expect it to be overnight. The fact it has now started is a good thing.

"From a health point of view you can't live in the area properly, especially when the dump is burning. I've had instances of having to leave my home at night because it's so unbearable. Baha Mar is right there and there's no way that business can survive in terms of what happened in 2017; the fires in March 2017. There's no way any business can survive like that, especially the opening of that type of resort."

San Duncombe, head of the reEarth environmental group, told Tribune Business that the selection of Providence/WRDG as preferred bidder for the landfill contract was "a step in the right direction".

She argued, though, that public consultation should have occurred prior to the award, and again slammed the Government for lack of transparency as Bahamians were unaware of what all bidders had offered.

"We seem to miss the point of being transparent," Mrs Duncombe said. "I don't know why any government has an issue understanding what that word means. We have no idea who all the players are, who bid what, and what they were offering.

"It would be wise to have an idea of what kind of proposals were on the table. At this point we're kind of shooting in the dark in terms of what other tenders were offering. We can look at their [Providence/WRDG] proposal and say it sound great, but the reality is maybe there are other ones out there that are better, but we'll never know.

"We operate in the dark in this country like every issue is a national security issue and has to be kept secret. There's no transparency ever. We keep getting half of this, half of that."

The Government had named all 18 entities that responded to the initial Expression of Interest (EOI) request, while also identifying all those who qualified and moved on to each new round at every step of the process.