The Tribune

By RICARDO WELLS

Tribune Staff Reporter

rwells@tribunemedia.net

TALL Pines MP Leslie Miller again hit out at officials at Bahamas Power and Light, saying the Christie administration, not him, would have to answer questions over the management deal it signed with PowerSecure.

Mr Miller further claimed that several members of the Christie Cabinet were not on board with the PowerSecure deal, however, stopped short of identifying who those persons actually were.

Speaking as a guest on Island Luck Television’s “The Real Deal” with host Ortland Bodie, the former minister of trade and industry brushed off concerns over the company by both the show’s host and callers, asserting that all questions on the success and failures of the company ought to be directed to “the people who put them there.”

Mr Miller served as executive chairman of the Bahamas Electricity Corporation (BEC), now called BPL, until late 2015. He was removed from his post at the utility provider shortly after the government announced that a transition service agreement had been signed with PowerSecure.

The outspoken MP was later made chairman of the Water and Sewerage Corporation.

Yesterday he expressed anger over the present state of the company as he insisted that many of the ongoing issues faced by BPL were in the process of being resolved under his regime.

“I don’t talk to nobody at (BPL) and I will never use (the name BPL), I know BEC. (The government) brought in the foreigners, let them live with it,” Mr Miller stated bluntly when asked about his current thoughts on the company.

When asked about the contents of the deal signed with PowerSecure, Mr Miller said he had not the slightest clue, saying that much of what was brokered between the two sides was done so at the Cabinet level and he was not privy to that information.

“I don’t have the slightest idea,” the Progressive Liberal Party MP said. “It doesn’t have anything to do with me. What agreement?

“It has nothing to do with Leslie Miller. Go ask the people who put them there, what are you asking me for? I didn’t put them there. Go ask (the government).

“Whoever it is, go ask them.”

Mr Miller added: “When we tried to make a difference at BEC, what did they do, they ship us out. What do you want me to do about it?

“I am not a minister in the government, how many times do I have to say that? I don’t make decisions.

“I am not hiding behind nothing. Hiding behind what gown-tail?

When asked about the role Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Works and Urban Development Philip “Brave” Davis played in negotiations, Mr Miller indicated that he was of the view that Mr Davis “didn’t make that decision.”

When pressed on what he meant by that, Mr Miller stated: “Man listen here, I am not going there. It is not my decision.

“Call me what you like, I am not going there. I am not going there because it isn’t my business.”

Mr Miller subsequently shifted the focus on the conversation to his handling of WSC. He said: “I know I am the chairman of the Water and Sewerage Corporation (WSC). I know that the board of directors that we had at BEC did as best we can on behalf of the Bahamian people.

“Why don’t you get the chairman of (BPL) to come here?”

Since taking over the management aspects of BPL, PowerSecure has been inundated with technical issues resulting in several extended blackouts.

Last December, Prime Minister Perry Christie took issue with BPL’s inability to provide uninterrupted electricity supply to New Providence.

At the time, Mr Christie told The Tribune he was not only “distressed” by the outages, but that he ordered a probe to uncover the root cause of the most recent outage.

That outage occurred the day before the opening ceremony of an international civil aviation conference being held at the Kendal Isaacs National Gymnasium, an occurrence Mr Christie suggested embarrassed the government.

Mr Christie’s position appeared to differ from that of Mr Davis, who days earlier had said he thought BPL was “meeting its mandate” and blamed the constant power outages on “aged machines”.