The Tribune

By AVA TURNQUEST

Tribune Staff Reporter

aturnquest@tribunemedia.net

BEC Chairman Leslie Miller said the corporation will move to crack down on abuse of overtime at facilities in the Family Islands as it makes substantial progress to reduce electricity costs.

Mr Miller said the corporation has decreased overtime by 35 per cent in the first quarter of this year, a cut back of $2.2 million compared to last year.

In addition to other measures, the reductions have contributed to a 24 per cent drop in maintenance and operations cost. According to Mr Miller the savings have been passed on to the consumer.

At a press conference on Wednesday, he said: “There is still a lot of wastage, some fellas are still trying to kill overtime in the Family Islands. We have some serious problems in Abaco, Eleuthera, and Bimini. In some cases fellas make over 100 per cent of their pay in overtime.

“It’s unfair,” he said, “for a fella to take home $30,000 in base pay and $42,000 in overtime. It don’t take a genius to figure out what’s going on there, and it’s five of them in one area of BEC in the Family Islands. So we have to put more attention to the Family Islands.”

He added: “We getting there, but we got a long way to go still to bring down the cost of electricity to the level that you would want it to be, and that we would wish it to be.”

In April last year, Mr Miller announced that BEC had slashed its monthly average of $1 million in overtime pay by 50 per cent.

In December 2012, he said the corporation was on the brink of collapse as a result of paying a handful of employees millions in overtime – with a total of $2,393,152.99 paid to just 10 employees.