By KHRISNA VIRGIL
Tribune Staff Reporter
kvirgil@tribunemedia.net
LESLIE Miller, BEC’s Chairman, yesterday expressed concern that salaries and bonuses at the electric corporation have been putting an unnecessary burden on the backs of Bahamians.
Mr Miller insisted that BEC employees have for years been holding a “gun” to the government’s head with their demands for exorbitant pay.
The Tall Pines MP told parliamentarians that those demands often come coupled with threats of power disconnection for thousands of Bahamians.
He said the government is now tasked with the job of regulating the corporation, which has recently faced heavy criticism over the nearly $12 million it paid out last year in overtime.
Mr Miller made the accusations as he spoke in the House on the pension fund protection bill.
“Some changes have to take place in this country,” he said, “we have to look after the welfare of all of our people and not just a select group that takes advantage of all of us daily. Some (BEC employees) don’t go to work until 4 o’clock. You try to bring in flexi time, you try to bring in shifts (but) they try to turn the lights off.
“That is blackmail, that is collusion. You cannot run a country with a gun to your head. “
While Board of Directors at BEC are in the process of assessing how best they can end the current situation, Mr Miller said an audit company is expected to produce a report in the next 30 days.
That company has not only been tasked with concluding how BEC employees accrued more than $800,000 in overtime pay during hurricane Sandy, but to investigate how certain employees took home hundreds of thousands in overtime pay.
“We were trying to ascertain, me and the accounting firm, how is it possible that one employee at BEC could accumulate overtime totalling $421,361.66 in a five-year period. His base salary was $49,547.”
He said officials had used every possible model available to calculate such possibilities, but concluded that many of the documented fees paid for overtime were impossible and not attainable.
Last month, Mr Miller told The Tribune that BEC was on the brink of collapse as a result of paying a handful of employee millions in overtime.
In total $2,393,152.99 was paid to just 10 employees.
According to Mr Miller, in the 2011/2012 fiscal year, BEC paid out $41.8 million in salaries, $11.8 million in overtime costs, $1.5 million because of sick leave and absenteeism, $3.7 million in medical costs, $3.1 million in bonuses and allowances, $348 million in fuel costs and $5.1 million in vacation time.
Comments
John 11 years, 10 months ago
When I tried to make the former prime minister aware of what was going on at BEC with staff making excessive overtime and how they were targeting certain customers to 'extort' money from them, (either pay your light bill or pay the BEC employee not to disconect), his secretary insisted that it had to be in writing and either emailed or faxed or hand- delivered to him. Just before election BEC's "contract workers' were going around disconnecting a select group of cusomers every two weeks. In fact as soon as you managed to pay your bill they would come around again with another bill. You had to either pay them or 'tip' them to keep your light on. When you questioned their actions or motive their response was "this is what the Prime Minister (hubert Ingraham) ordered. He bring in the experts and they tell us to disconnect every two weeks." This was not only driven by greed but politically motivated as well. In fact the way some of these workers carried on you could well say they used BEC to campaign for the PLP while the FNM was still in power! NOW if you think the amounts that BEC employees got in overtime is shocking, imagine how much they collected from consumers in 'tips' (extortions) who could not keep up with their bills but needed to keep their lights on. One contract worker was making upwards of $10,000.00 per month doing disconections. Making $120,000.00 per year with just a high school diploma...ADD the potential $50,000.00 plus in tips and you can see what was going on! Now that MP Leslie Miller is barking at these figures like a pot cake, I hope he snaps down like a pitt bull and bring these criminals to justice...They have forced so many struggling families to live in the dark, and many small struggling businesses to close down while they are still laughing all the way to the bank.
Ironvelvet 11 years, 10 months ago
Please do something about this ridiculous overtime. Its almost as though people can bank their salaries and live on overtime (tips). LOL This is ridiculous. A shift system needs to be implemented quickly!
John 11 years, 10 months ago
When an employee has to consistently earn the equilivant of his salary or more in overtime, this is a signal that something is wrong. Either that employee is abusing the system of overtime or the company needs to hire at last one additional employee to cover those overtime hours. BEC workers are already the highest paid in this country and to allow them to laugh all the way to the bank with overtime checks that are, in some cases, double their salaries is criminal! will the pot cake bite or just bark and crawl under one park car?
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