The Tribune

“I WILL never let the opportunity pass to remind BEC’s management and staff of its deficiency until the public is reasonably sure that the corporation can provide reliable service,” said the PLP minister.

A recent review, he said, noted that many major overhauls and periodic inspections had not been performed because of management negligence.

Paraphrasing the review the minister said: “They let the engines run until they break down… this is unacceptable.”

These words were not spoken by BEC’s much maligned executive chairman, Leslie Miller, but by Bradley Roberts, who in 2002 was the PLP’s Minister of Public Works.

The fiery Mr Roberts was speaking at the PLP’s 47th annual convention on the night of November 20, 2002. He was commenting on BEC’s newly commissioned gas turbine, which, he said, should relieve some of the country’s frequent load shedding. He vowed to continue to stress the need for better maintenance programmes and a more proactive approach.

In today’s Tribune, Deputy Prime Minister Philip “Brave” Davis — to whom we offer our condolences on the death of his mother — contradicted Mr Miller, saying that he is satisfied that this weekend’s island-wide blackout “did not occur as a result of negligence by (BEC) employees”.

A “fire in the trenches” at the Blue Hills power station on Friday affected generators at both the Blue Hills and Clifton Power stations, plunging New Providence into a weekend of darkness.

“One of the main wires running to the seven engines at Blue Hills, one of those overheated,” Mr Miller had explained. “And there was oil in the trench that should not have been there. We’ve been begging them to clean out the trenches where they have the wires and we had a fire there before and yet they never rectified the situation. So when that one wire got overloaded, because oil was there, it sparked and blew up all the wires. The preventative maintenance wasn’t done and the lack of proper maintenance is what’s killing BEC.”

Bradley Roberts was saying the same thing in 2002 – lack of maintenance was destroying the electrical plant, he said.

Over the weekend, Mr Miller softened his “blame” statement.

“The fault on the system was no fault of any BEC worker,” the Tall Pines MP said. “All I was trying to say is if there was proper maintenance, oil would not have been in the trenches. I didn’t say it was their fault, it wasn’t their fault.

“If we, as a company, including management, had done proper maintenance it would not have happened,” he added. “I was not saying they did not do their jobs, the oil was in the trench for about five years and the old wires for more 30 years – so this problem is decades old. I thanked the guys, the employees worked hard, very hard from Friday until Sunday and I was with them every step of the way. I apologise if they perceived my comments as saying they were responsible. No one was responsible for the machines shutting down.”

We understand exactly what Mr Miller’s problems are and what he is trying to say without really saying it. After being in our business for more than 50 years and around complicated machinery for all of those years, we know that to find a Bahamian who believes in daily maintenance is to find a jewel indeed.

Most Bahamians will let it go, a leak would be bound with a piece of cloth, whatever wire they could find would hold a piece of equipment together — eventually all gears would come to a grinding halt making repairs or the purchase of new equipment, costing a fortune, inevitable.

It got so bad many years ago that before we went to the executive offices upstairs, our foreman, the late Sammy Haven, and ourselves would daily inspect every piece of equipment, including the generator outside. Today we have staff who have taken over that task.

But no matter what anyone says daily maintenance is the secret to a long life and efficient operation of any equipment. Obviously this is lacking at BEC.

Mr Davis praised BEC employees “whose diligent efforts” he said immediately began the restoration process. He commended them for their “dedication and hard work.” He said when he visited the facility on Saturday, he noted that “in some instances, employees worked straight through the night and into the following day so as to carry out the necessary repairs and to bring customers back on line.”

So did Tribune press room employees, but in earlier years they never seemed to connect the lack of daily maintenance to those round-the-clock hours required after a crash to bring the much neglected equipment back on line.

Paul Maynard, the union leader who we hear making all the demands today, does not sound like the same concerned BEC staff member of yesteryear. But, of course, we can probably even understand this change. In those days, Mr Maynard understood that BEC staff were well paid in the context of the times — in fact the best paid of all corporation employees — and he hated to see the advantage being taken of the corporation by some of its employees. In those days there was much sabotage. We recall 1996 in particular when the plant mechanic who was running for re-election as president of the Bahamas Workers Electrical Union promised his men that he would fight for a 17 per cent salary increase. The country could not afford the increase. Government made an offer, which the union refused.

In those days, medical interns at the Princess Margaret Hospital — young doctors with nine years of university and medical school behind them, were earning little more than BEC’s common labourers, who had no education. These doctors’ salaries in 1996 were $19,700 annually. They also had to put in a minimum of 200 hours a month — and, unlike the BEC worker– they got no overtime pay. At BEC in 1996 common labourers earned between $16,000 and $19,000 a year and jack hammer operators and tree trimmers between $16,800 and $20,500. That was their basic pay. However, with overtime their take home pay could be in the region of $40,000 to $45,000 a year.

And yet that year, they were on a work to rule from December, 1995 to February, 1996 when a saboteur threw a copper wire over the lines just west of the Killarney sub-station off Coral Harbour. Two of the high tension lines had been damaged, and the town was thrown into darkness. In the seconds that it took for our generator to switch on, the surge had badly damaged one of our machines, putting that day’s publication in jeopardy. The next day BEC had to apologise for electricity being off longer than it should have because, as staff were on work to rule, they refused to go out after hours to do repairs.

This type of behaviour would not have met the approval of the young Paul Maynard, today’s president of the Bahamas Electrical Workers Union. It was he who recently led his union in the demands for higher wages, which most Bahamians can’t afford and which is pricing this country out of the tourist market. Of course, Mr Maynard seeing how freely and without any accountability government is spending tax payers money today, probably finds no reason why his unionist shouldn’t share in the bonanza.

And now there is a shouting match between Mr Miller and Mr Maynard with union leader Maynard vowing that unless Mr Miller is fired, his union will not support the government in its planned restructuring of BEC.

We hope that soon the Paul Maynard who we once knew — that loyal son of the soil — will step from the wings, meet with Mr Miller and instead of the name calling sit down and try to agree what’s best for BEC, the Bahamian people and this country called the Bahamas. A handshake and some commonsense is all that is needed to get us all back on track.