The Tribune

By SANCHESKA BROWN

Tribune Staff Reporter

sbrown@tribunemedia.net

FNM Deputy Chairman Dr Duane Sands said he is “fed up” with the many excuses the Bahamas Electricity Corporation (BEC) has given for the numerous power outages on New Providence in the past few weeks.

Dr Sands said in eastern New Providence, where he lives, the electricity has been off at least 10 times in the past week, including at least three power outages over the holiday weekend.

Residents on the Eastern Road and some parts of Blair Estates were without power from around 2pm on Saturday and late yesterday the electricity supply had still not been restored. According to residents, BEC technicians began digging around 5pm on Saturday to determine what caused the power outage and trenching work was continuing on Eastern Road near the Montagu foreshore yesterday. The Tribune attempted to contact BEC officials, but no one was available for comment.

Dr Sands said he also lost a flat screen television due to the power outages and his medical practice has been affected because he has no generator at the office.

Unfair

“Having been promised no more power cuts, having been promised a reduction in electrical bills and having seen the unfair drama as it relates to those who are on the special ‘no turn off list’, it pisses people off with the constant power outages,” Dr Sands said yesterday. “Appliances are being damaged and they are constantly changing the narrative at BEC as to why the power is going out. One day it’s the lightning, the next day it’s the wires, then it’s the generating capacity – they just need to get it together, get it right.”

“The problem has even impacted my practice,” he added. “I don’t have a generator at the office and the power is going off for very long periods of time. The phone is off, the air conditioning off and you can’t run business like that. It really reminds you of our third world status. It says a lot about this country that now we see the power going off as the norm. It was a miserable week for a lot of people.”

To make matters worse, Dr Sands said as the power outages become more frequent, it seems as if the price on generators are going up.

“The price,” he said, “has gone up as the demand has gone up. I was going to buy one Monday but I changed my mind when I got the quote. It was ridiculous. We really just need to do better in this country. It’s either BEC or BTC acting up for no reason. And going to BEC to file a claim makes no sense because it is a waste of time. I have computers that burned out and a flat screen television that burned out and I am still waiting on them.”

Last week, BEC Executive Chairman Leslie Miller said the last two blackouts were not evidence that the company is unable to meet the demand for electricity in New Providence.

Widespread

The most recent widespread power outage occurred last week Monday, around 50 per cent of customers in New Providence and Paradise Island were left without electricity for nearly eight hours.

On Wednesday, Mr Miller said that around 7.30am there was a fault on BEC’s network that caused the engines at Blue Hills to trip offline resulting in disruptions.

He added that efforts were made to restore supply to those affected customers within minutes of the outage, but shortly after 11am there were further challenges with one of the larger units at Blue Hills that caused another shutdown and loss of electricity supply.

Mr Miller conceded last week that a “number of unforeseen challenges” throughout the day led to the prolonged outages experienced by some of BEC’s customers.