The Tribune

By NATARIO McKENZIE

Tribune Business Reporter

nmckenzie@tribunemedia.net

Deputy Prime Minister Philip Davis said yesterday he was “satisfied” that last Friday’s island-wide black-out was not a result of Bahamas Electricity Corporation (BEC) employee negligence, effectively refuting previous comments by chairman Leslie Miller.

    Bahamas Electrical Workers Union (BEWU) president, Paul Maynard, yesterday reiterated that the union would not cooperate with the BEC reform process until Mr Miller is ousted.

   Mr Davis said in a statement: “Having personally visited the site, and having discussed the matter with BEC’s management and technical staff, I am satisfied that the fault did not occur as a result of negligence by employees, and it is regrettable that any intimation to that effect was ever issued.”

    “I rest my case on that,” said Mr Maynard. “That says it all.”

Mr Miller had told the media that “improper maintenance and negligence by BEC workers” caused the power failure. He also said he believes no one will be punished because of “union interference”.

Mr Miller, however, backtracked on those comments yesterday, claiming instead that no one was at fault and there was nothing that could have been done to prevent the outage, while commending BEC staff for their efforts.

    A “fire in the trenches” at the Blue Hills power station caused the island-wide outage on Friday, which forced the company to conduct load-shedding activities throughout New Providence over the weekend.

Mr Miller said the fire erupted after an “overloaded wire” came into contract with oil that had dripped into the trenches at the power plant.

    Mr Maynard confirmed yesterday that the union would not cooperate with the BEC reform process as long as Mr Miller was the executive chairman.

“That is our position. That’s a position that we are keeping. We are holding fast to that. We are simply not going to deal with Mr Miller anymore,” said Mr Maynard.