The Tribune

By MALCOLM STRACHAN

FROM the time when most of us were young, we learned the value of having to work for a fitting reward. If you got an A in school, your parents would take you for ice cream, a happy meal, or some other treat to reinforce how well you were doing. Similarly, we also knew if we did poorly in our studies, our best bet was to pretend to be invisible and work our hardest to get our grades up.

It can simply be summed up that children do not learn when they are rewarded for sub-par behaviour. In fact, negatively reinforcing a child’s poor behaviour does just the opposite. It can foster an attitude of entitlement in that child, preventing them from ever reaching their maximum potential.

To that end, it is quite alarming for the nation’s power company, Bahamas Power & Light (BPL), to receive a $1.1m bonus based on, above all things, its performance. This has certainly not sat well with many households across the country who have had to endure some extremely difficult days when the power goes off and stays off for hours. Families that have had their lives disrupted and inconvenienced who still have to cough up hundreds of dollars for poor service on their power bill find it very hard to believe that such service is rewarded with $1 million big ones.

Bahamas Power & Light CEO Pamela Hill pledged that the embattled utility provider aims to achieve two key things:

“One of them is to improve the efficiency of our plants so they are able to burn less diesel and less heavy fuel oil. You do that by going in early, doing the preventative maintenance, looking at everything associated with the plant and essentially getting more miles per gallon.”

She continued, “We are looking out for our customers and looking to find a product where we can have less ups and downs so that 10 per cent, maybe 20 per cent or 50 per cent of their fuel price is stable or fixed.”

We may have heard it all when it comes to over-the-top public relations when it comes to BPL. In fact, BPL is a number of things. Among them, words like “efficient” and “inexpensive” or “affordable” do not come to mind. In a country where we experience such a limited quality of life, it is a slap in the face of all consumers to consistently receive underrated service and have promises made to them ad nauseam, claiming that the sun will shine again tomorrow.

We demand better than that, and we certainly don’t agree to paying an extra $1.1m in bonuses for it. Ms Hill insists that the bonus is justified, as she claims there have been some improvements in service reliability. She also seems to be requesting that frustrated citizens remain patient, stating that “nothing can be resolved in a very overnight fashion”.

However, the continued discontent we’re experiencing with our utility provider did not just begin yesterday. Moreover, when PowerSecure was initially brought in to manage the power company it had a specific mandate. The particulars were quite clear – to bring energy reform to The Bahamas, reduce the costs of electricity and improve customer service and reliability. Further, the aforementioned key performance indicators (KPIs) detailed the specific criteria for which BPL would be able to obtain any if not all of the additional $3m performance based compensation.

While the nation is in a well-warranted uproar over this issue, the question is now – what exactly were those performance goals that led the former government to practically give away $1.1m from the public purse?

What’s worse is BPL’s CEO - God bless her heart - actually believes the bonus is justified.

Imagine you’re paying for your leaky roof to be repaired and after a year of renovations, your property manager goes ahead without consulting you and pays full price, and a bonus for the service, all while your roof is still leaking. It’s extremely doubtful that property manager and contractor would be able to get a referral from you, much less a bonus.

BPL is an abject failure. The cost hasn’t gone down for consumers who already live in a country of approximately 400,000 people that brandishes the title of being the seventh most expensive place to live in the world, per MoveHub.

Deputy Prime Minister Peter Turnquest, who also cosigned this study earlier this year, expressed his own contempt with the performance bonus issued by the previous government last month. He admitted that there is not much that the government can do in this regard, as all terms were agreed upon by its predecessor. However, he acknowledged that some in-house conversations will have to take place within government, as I am sure he knows that the public will be expecting the government to protect the interest of the people, and not BPL.

Energy reform was a campaign promise of the Minnis administration, and certainly is a crucial part of its mandate to the people. BPL also indicated as much, but we have yet to see the business plan to gain an understanding of where decreased costs and more reliable service stand in their timeline. How are we expected to be patient, and for how much longer?

Tragically, we cannot afford the luxury of buying dreams of old adages about the sun coming out again tomorrow. Rather, we are quite confident that it will. We can feel its intensity as we endure the sweltering heat and pray 1.1 million ‘Hail Mary’s’ for our appliances to still be in working order whenever the power is restored.

As we are entering the most active time of this dreaded hurricane season, flashbacks of the aftermath of Hurricane Matthew are enough to give a person with the most stable hands PTSD. Many are fearful of reliving that nightmare and having it topped off with extended power outages being met by high light bills

Undoubtedly, we will be asked again to have more patience and trust in a power provider that has been nothing short of a gigantic disappointment.