The Tribune

EDITOR, The Tribune

I can’t speak for anyone else, but every time I see Alfred Sears, Minister of Works on TV or in the daily newspaper, I see the Face of Failure, absolute and complete failure. It’s been over a year now since he was unable to locate his magical email on the IDB Hedge Programme for BPL fuel. As reported in the daily newspaper on December 9th, 2022, Mr. Sears finally admitted that he had indeed received the emails from BPL fuel hedge committee on October 9, 2021. So, it took Mr. Sears 425 days to locate emails after repeatedly saying he had no knowledge of these emails.

The biggest travesty in this whole episode is that the Bahamian people are ultimately suffering, with this record heat, and now sky-high electricity bills. Evidence of this failure is being felt everyday by Bahamians, for example my BPL bill jumped 93% from May to June 2023. Unfortunately, the worst has not arrived since the August bills are expected to be even higher.

For the first time in a long time the previous Government was able to be proactive, and along with IDB created a hedge programme to control the increase in fuel charges. Hedging is not new, airlines, cruise lines and trucking companies use hedges to reduce their exposure to rising fuel costs. We lost a real opportunity to continue, continuity in Government when Mr. Sears failed to act on the fuel hedge. Being Minister responsible for BPL, the right and proper thing to do in my opinion was to resign because he had failed the Bahamian people and continues to fail every day, when he appears in the newspapers and on TV. I read both newspapers every day, but I read any story where he is the lead cautiously. We don’t know if he is being transparent, or if he has conveniently forgotten some salient point or facts, or if he is misleading the public as he did for 425 days. In my opinion if he were in the private sector he would have been fired on December 8th, 2022 when he revealed that he had indeed received those emails.

In the Westminster system members of Parliament are called honourable. They are expected to behave and act honourably in all their duties. When Liz Truss was elected Prime Minister of the UK, one of her very first decisions was to change course with the economic plan put forward by her predecessor. Her goal was to turn Britain into a low tax, high growth economy post Brexit. That proved to be disastrous, the market panicked and the pound plunged. She did the honourable thing and resigned her post as Prime Minister, after only 44 days, thereby becoming the shortest serving Prime Minister in British history.

In the Bahamas politicians have conveniently forgotten why we call members of Parliament honourable. And politicians are now more self-serving and less about being servants of their constituents. Hence this is the reason, in my opinion, as to why the Minister of Works Alfred Sears refuses to do what I consider the honourable thing and resign for his failure at BPL. In my view this Minister has single handedly increased the cost of living and inflation on the entire country by the increased BPL fuel surcharge. BPL literally affects the cost of everything in this country and yet the Minister believes he did nothing wrong. Wow!

B A Sweeting

Nassau,

August 31, 2023