The Tribune

BY NEIL HARTNELL

TRIBUNE Business Editor

nhartnell@tribunemedia.net

AN EX-DEPUTY prime minister is asserting that the Opposition has ”fallen short” in holding the Government to account for The Bahamas’ energy woes with households and businesses paying high bills for “a service they are not getting”.

Desmond Bannister, in what will likely be perceived as criticism of his own Free National Movement (FNM) party, told Tribune Business that while the Opposition had “shouted about” the Davis administration’s failure to be transparent and disclose key documents related to its energy reforms, and issues affecting Bahamas Power & Light (BPL) and Bahamas Grid Company, it had failed “to make a meaningful impact”.

Arguing that frequent, lengthy power outages had largely been banished on New Providence when the Minnis administration was voted out of office in September 2021, Mr Bannister, who had held ministerial responsibility for BPL, said the Opposition should have taken a more aggressive approach and even approached the courts for help in forcing the necessary disclosures.

“This is something where the Opposition has fallen short,” the former deputy prime minister told this newspaper. “The Government refused document disclosure, but the Opposition has gone to the House of Assembly, shouted about it but done nothing to make a meaningful impact for the Bahamian people.

“It’s going to be very important for the Bahamian people to be informed of exactly what has gone on and what is going to be done to change and fix the problems. These are challenges that a properly run and advised [BPL] Board, which has already been there four-and-a-half years, would ensure don’t happen.

“For anyone to say, and I particularly need you to mention this, but for those who say this has gone on for as long as they recall, we had these challenges dealt with,” Mr Bannister added, referring to the frequency and length of recent power outages in New Providence and on other Family Islands. “There were virtually no outages by 2021.

“When I came to office in 2017, every night parts of New Providence were without power. Every night. By 2019 we had turned the corner, and by 2020 we had reliable power. It is not something that can be allowed to go on. The Government must properly address it, and the Opposition of this country must stand up and take proper action to force disclosure. They need to go to court and get proper disclosure on who are the owners of anything related to power.”

Michael Pintard, the Opposition’s current leader, will likely counter that the FNM exposed the consequences of the first Davis administration’s failure to execute the trades to support BPL’s then-fuel hedge, which was compounded by the Government holding the utility’s fuel charge below cost for another year, resulting in 2022-2024 increases that peaked at 163 percent to regain $110m in under-recovered fuel costs owed to Shell. This objective was also not achieved.

Meanwhile, Mr Bannister reiterated that the Minnis administration “had the whole power issue moving in the right direction” prior to its 2021 general election loss. “There were virtually no outages,” he said. “We had brought in the six Wartsila engines. But, based on everything we have seen, we are back in 2017 and having serious maintenance issues…

“Relying on BPL to tell us what has happened will not be enough. We need an independent investigation to tell us what happened. The Bahamian people are paying for a service they are not getting.”

Dionisio D’Aguilar, one of Mr Bannister’s former Cabinet colleagues, earlier this week told Tribune Business that BPL’s latest woes have cost his Superwash laundromat chain “at least $100,000” in generator repairs and related expenses, as he blasted: “You bank on BPL being dreadful, but not all the time.”

He added that when he entered the laundromat industry “I didn’t think I’d also have to go into the generator business”, and revealed that, of his 12 locations, two are presently exposed without generators because one “failed completely” while another is “running hot” because BPL’s more frequent and extended outages have imposed greater “strain” due to their extra use.

Asserting that it is “impossible to operate a business in The Bahamas” without generators, the former minister of tourism and aviation in the Minnis administration’s Cabinet said his business is far from alone in having back-up power difficulties as “everyone is screaming for parts from their suppliers” due to increased wear and tear on their generators.

Describing both energy supply, and just operating a business in The Bahamas, as “a major nightmare”, Mr D’Aguilar told this newspaper that his days are increasingly “consumed by generator problems, power problems and electrical equipment failures” due to the escalating unreliability of BPL’s supply - outages combined with “dips, spikes, swings and surges” that damage key assets and cause their failure.

And, with the Davis administration’s much-touted energy reforms failing to deliver relief and improvements for Bahamian households and businesses in the short-term, he demanded that the Government “stop selling a story” and instead divert all available resources and state agencies to “fix the problem” so that New Providence receives reliable power supply “99 percent of the time”.

Calling on the Government to find the necessary funding by reducing travel, and seeking savings elsewhere in its Budget, Mr D’Aguilar argued that The Bahamas’ ambitions to attain - and be seen - as a “first world class country” will never be achieved unless it resolves the long-standing weaknesses caused by power being too expensive, too unreliable and too dirty.

Speaking after last Wednesday’s island-wide New Providence outage, the Superwash chief - who was temporarily off-island - said: “My people say it’s a disaster; the power going on and off. We’ve had generators fail, and my management team saying the Internet is going down. It’s impossible to operate.

“In The Bahamas, in the business I’m in, I need 12 generators [for each laundromat location]. You cannot operate a business in The Bahamas without a generator. You have the cost of buying a generator, purchasing fuel for the generator, maintaining the generator and, because the power is off for so long and so frequently, generators are being over-used and everyone is screaming for replacement parts from their suppliers.

“Generators are failing because they are getting significant use of late. They are pieces of equipment that fail. You are having the stress, you are having the strain of dealing with BPL power loss, having to keep 12 generators operational, equipment failing, having to source parts because they are failing more frequently because they are having to be used more often for extended periods of time,” Mr D’Aguilar added.

“It’s amazing how impactful this is on business. You have brown-outs, you have surges; it’s a total nightmare operating a business in The Bahamas with equipment that has as many electrical parts as modern machines do.. It’s so annoying and such a cost.”