The Tribune

EDITOR, The Tribune

It is not surprising that the country is up in arms about this latest piece of stupidity, coming on the heels of the worst summer ever, in terms of electrical supply. No, nobody has even the slightest confidence in anyone in the BPL hierarchy being a good steward of monies already paid in to BPL, much less a new and majorly skewed tax to be legislated.

If we take the view, and most people do, that BEC/BPL has been the handmaiden of political chicanery for over 50 years now, why in God’s name are we only taxing the head of household and not the wider population, who have, with their votes over the last half century, sustained malfeasance, misfeasance, cronyism, and just plain bad management of this State Owned Enterprise. Maybe the majority of people may feel that BPL is now running a little better than heretofore (but maybe they don’t) but what happens in two years when another political party takes over, and the money keeps haemorrhaging and the chicanery starts again?

The Reduction Bond is a very good idea, but the people who pay the interest should be the people who created the debt. The Bahamian Citizens. Every damned one. So find a way to target every man woman and child in every corner of these islands and tax them for their 50 years of iniquity. I appreciate that that may be difficult to do but why should foreign residents pay, and why should our tourists pay. Don’t want to increase VAT? Add an energy sales tax. Maybe charge it on Corned Beef and those other products that mostly Bahamians eat and shouldn’t.

The main thing is for the BPL Board to stop thinking about debt solutions like they think about electrical generation. Isolate the problem and fix it.

MONKEEDOO

Nassau

November 8, 2019