The Tribune

By RASHAD ROLLE

Tribune Staff Reporter

rrolle@tribunemedia.net

POWERSECURE told the new interim CEO of Bahamas Power & Light to stay clear of ongoing disputes between itself and the board of BPL and focus squarely on such service priorities as “keeping the lights on” and raising money for equipment improvements, Carson Harreld said during his introductory press conference yesterday.

The disputes, which have made some suspect PowerSecure’s days as the management company of BPL are numbered, “will be handled by attorneys on both sides and others,” Mr Harreld, the company’s interim CEO, said at BPL’s headquarters.

“That’s not my remit. I’m here to keep the business going and to work with the board on what they want to do to get the best electricity in the Bahamas.”

With 40 years of experience in the sector, Mr Harreld replaces Pamela Hill whose rocky tenure ended last week when BPL’s board fired her.

However, it’s not clear what process will determine whether Mr Harreld or someone else becomes the substantive CEO of BPL.

The management services agreement (MSA) between the government and PowerSecure, negotiated and signed by the former Christie administration, has never been released to the public.

And Darnell Osbourne, chairwoman of BPL’s board, reiterated yesterday that the much sought-after audit report into BPL will not be released to the public while police conduct investigations into its allegations of theft and fraud.

Mr Harreld said yesterday that it’s too early to say whether his plans for BPL will differ from his predecessor but stressed he is sensitive to the cost of electricity.

“We are very dependent here in the Bahamas on the price of oil and diesel,” he said. “We’ve had some issues this past year that even though the price went down some, we were working on many of our units to improve them so we couldn’t burn the lowest cost fuel at times. We had to rely more on the Blue Hills power plant which is a higher cost of fuel. In the short-run, even though cost has been down in general our fuel rates have been higher than we’d like. We’re aware of that and we’re working on it. We’ll be doing an RFP process to work to get even better prices from our vendors.”

Mr Harreld said he was in the Bahamas recently for about 10 weeks as a consultant. He said he was previously based in Atlanta where he worked for 40 years.

BPL’s board has called for PowerSecure to cure all deficiencies and/or breaches under the MSA within 30 days.

As it relates to a probe into a multi-million-dollar fraud scheme at the company, BPL has demanded that PowerSecure reimburse the funds.

Mr Harreld said yesterday he has ideas for how to prevent such theft.

“(It’s an area that’s) near and dear to my heart and one I have a lot of experience in,” he said. “There are some things that we could do to help improve that. If a group of people get together and decided to cheat, it’s hard in the short run to catch it.”

He said he hasn’t yet seen the results of the audit investigation.