The Tribune

By RASHAD ROLLE

Tribune Staff Reporter

rrolle@tribunemedia.net

ATTORNEY Wayne Munroe said yesterday he is going to seek redress through the Supreme Court for the three Bahamas Power & Light employees who were fired in connection with a fraud probe.

He’s concerned, he said, that proper procedures were not followed in dismissing the employees and claimed that the accounting system BPL had in place makes it nearly impossible to know who was responsible for committing fraud.

He wants his action to be considered concurrently with the one Trade Union Congress President Obie Ferguson is said to have launched some time ago. Mr Ferguson could not be reached for comment yesterday, but Mr Munroe said Mr Ferguson’s action, scheduled for September 4, involved three employees of BPL who were previously fired in connection with the same probe. Mr Munroe said two of those employees were rehired after Mr Ferguson made filings in the Supreme Court but one of those people remains unemployed.

“I’m in the process of filing actions in the Supreme Court similar to Obie Ferguson’s actions concerning the first three persons that were terminated,” Mr Munroe said, describing his case against BPL as “straight forward.”

“The (employees) were not given a chance to be heard,” he said. “No allegations were ever put to them. No information was put to them like this supposed audit report so they could say, ‘We are accusing you based on this, what do you say in response?’ They have a right to that in their industrial agreement. If BPL didn’t comply with the procedure, the industrial agreement says the people should be reinstated.”

The Minnis administration has kept a tight leash on the audit report into BPL prepared by Ernst & Young, which few people have seen. 

“The position we put is they cannot have complied with the industrial agreement if they didn’t show the report to our clients,” Mr Munroe said. “Our position is you didn’t follow procedure, so these people should be reinstated. If they think they could show these people had something to do with what happened, do it properly; come and say we suspect you of falsifying invoices and ask the workers what they have to say about it. The fact that nobody has the audit means BPL could not have complied with the industrial agreement.”

Aside from concerns about procedure, Mr Munroe said there are other substantive concerns about the firing process.

“The allegation is that fraudulent invoices were processed for payments,” he noted. “However, they had no system in place to show how the fraudulent invoices came to be in the department (in question). The messenger could’ve brought those invoices, but no system was in place to record that; the managers could have done so but no system was in place to record that. It could have been created in the department (in question) but you’d only know that if you had a system in place to show that. There was a failure to put in place procedures to track potential dishonesty. People may always steal and someone may forge a signature on an invoice. The question is, how do we know who did it?

“If invoices come in to the department (in question), you would have to ask, who brought every invoice into the department? Those are the sort of procedures that managers put in place, not line workers who follow any procedure that falls into place.”

The Bahamas Electrical Workers Union (BEWC) has been critical of the fact that line-staff have been fired but managers have not.

Echoing this complaint, Mr Munroe said: “I’ve been made to understand the difference between managers and line staff is in political affiliation.”

BEWU leaders also chalk up the difference in treatment between the two groups to “familial ties,” linking managers to elected officials. 

Nearly two weeks ago BPL fired three employees from the department in question.

Last week, two managers were suspended from the company.  

The BPL board has also fired Pamela Hill, the company’s former CEO.