The Tribune

By SANCHESKA BROWN

Tribune Staff Reporter

sbrown@tribunemedia.net

FREE National Movement Leader Dr Hubert Minnis said yesterday it is “unconscionable” that Bahamians have to suffer through an intense heat wave because the government was “ill-prepared” for the challenge of generating electricity during the summer months.

In a statement, Dr Minnis said the government has made a habit of being “asleep at the switch” and it’s the people who suffer because of their “ineptitude”.

His comments came one day after Prime Minister Perry Christie admitted that rental generators, needed to prevent load shedding and blackouts, were ordered late.

As a result, the electricity provider announced “outage rotations” throughout New Providence as the corporation continued to grapple with “generation challenges” at its power stations.

“We found out this week from our embattled prime minister that his government was ill-prepared for the oncoming summer heat that is affecting so many homes and families. Many of them continue to suffer through power outages because, as the prime minister was finally forced to admit, the government failed to prepare the power generation shortfall due to summer demand,” Dr Minnis said.

“This PLP government has made a habit of being asleep at the switch and it’s the people that suffer because of their ineptitude. It was only last week when asked about the power failures hurting so many families suffering through the hot summer, that the Deputy Prime Minister (Philip Davis) told Bahamians, ‘Be patient. We will have an answer soon.’

“Well, we have the answer, this government simply failed to get ready for the summer demand. How many mothers with young babies in New Providence have to suffer for the PLP’s latest failures? How many of our seniors are forced to sit through blistering heat with no power in some Family Islands because the PLP didn’t act in time?”

While on the “Ed Fields Live” show on Kiss FM on Monday Mr Christie said the temporary generators have been ordered and relief is on the way.

“The difficulty is that I thought we had anticipated, that is the management of BEC and the management going forward, that we were going to have a bad summer and I knew that we had to have at least 40 megawatts in addition to what we have now - they were ordered late,” Mr Christie said.

“The fact is (that the management is) anticipating relief by a certain date that they can give. And the relief would be where you add to the capacity as it exists now; the 40 megawatts that they say should be able to balance out the challenges that we have.”

The government owned electricity provider has been load shedding intermittently for more than two weeks but there had been numerous power cuts before that as the electricity provider continues to “struggle” with a significant generation shortfall.