The Tribune

By NEIL HARTNELL

Tribune Business Editor

nhartnell@tribunemedia.net

A businessman yesterday reiterated his warning that proposals to ‘split-off’ the Grand Bahama Port Authority’s (GBPA) regulatory functions into an independent trust “spell potential chaos”.

Peter Adderley, a PR executive and owner of Creative Works, suggested it was “unrealistic” to expect the Port’s shareholder families, as owners of a private company, to agree to such a proposition.

He was responding to comments by Barry Malcolm, the Grand Bahama Chamber of Commerce’s outgoing president, who told Tribune Business in a recent interview that the ‘independent trust’ proposal was the ‘consensus view’ of its members and Port licensees.

They, he explained, believed that Freeport’s regulatory and quasi-governmental powers should “not be the purview of two families” (the Haywards and St Georges), and should be split off from the for-profit Port Group Ltd to remove any conflicts and ensure “fairness and transparency”.

Mr Adderley, though, suggested in a statement yesterday that the Chamber represented only a ‘minority’ in Freeport’s private sector.

And he implied many of those calling for the independent trust held the opposing view when they were employed by the Port - a seeming shot at Mr Malcolm and Dillon Knowles, a Chamber director who is also standing for the president’s post.

Mr Adderley also bristled at suggestions that his comments were made on the Port’s behalf, and that of its shareholders/management, saying that his previous press release was his own work and that his views had not changed.

“I maintain.... the local chamber has done a poor job in communicating its messages, and has drawn limited reach among Grand Bahama residents,” he said in yesterday’s statement to Tribune Business.

“The Chamber insists that it took two years to arrive at its 2015 vision paper, and it represents the views of its members. The membership of the Chamber at best is 10 per cent of the total GBPA license holders, and the wider community turns out to Chamber events in low numbers.”

Mr Malcolm, though, previously took issue with these assertions, telling Tribune Business on Monday: “Nothing could be further from the truth.”

He added that the Chamber’s 400 active members covered 85 per cent of the Port area’s workforce.

And Mr Malcolm said the views of a wide cross-section of non-Chamber members had been obtained through various forums, all of which were used to form the ‘Freeport 2015 and beyond’ report.

But, dismissing the ‘independent trust’ proposal, Mr Adderley also said: “The regulation arm of the GBPA as it exists today serves as a part of the Hawksbill Creek Agreement from its inception. It has contributed much to Freeport and, by extension, Grand Bahama’s success story.

“Unless and until the Chamber outlines the specifics of the establishment of an independent trust, the concept as noted in its paper spells potential chaos. The GBPA is a private company and we cannot hold unrealistic expectations.”

He added: Many who now call for transparency once protected such privacy when they were earning a pay cheque from the GBPA. For years, information about the GBPA’s fees and regulations has been online in a most transparent form.

“I hope that the new Chamber president would take advantage of the invite to sit at the table and work with the GBPA on license holders’ matters and generate a wider public reach. The Chamber is to be commended for its efforts to present a paper, and I continue to remind all that the paper represents findings and recommendations only.”