The Tribune

By Morgan Adderley

Tribune Staff Reporter

madderley@tribunemedia.net

BAHAMAS Electrical Workers Union president Paul Maynard yesterday told The Tribune that The Bahamas is “on the graces of God” regarding whether another major power outage will affect the country this holiday season.

Mr Maynard said “ancient equipment” is to blame for the recent spate of power outages. He noted the new equipment needed to rectify the situation will not arrive until next summer.

On Thursday, a widespread outage struck New Providence, leaving many residents without electricity for hours and delaying flights at Lynden Pindling International Airport (LPIA).

Adding to frustration was the fact that electricity flickered on and off intermittently throughout the day, causing some to fear the brown outs would damage appliances.

The issue caused panic at LPIA where hopeful passengers reacted angrily to misinformation that flights were cancelled for the day.

When asked what caused these outages, Mr Maynard told The Tribune: “Ancient equipment, man!

“They’ve been obsolete for at least 10 years now. We shouldn’t even be fooling with them. But you know, guys go out every day, risk their lives, to deal with it, keep the power going.”

On Thursday, Bahamas Power and Light said a cable fault at one of its substations caused the power outages.

When asked if BPL is putting anything in place to prevent these kinds of things from occurring in the future, Mr Maynard pointed to the anticipated new equipment.

“We ordered stuff…but (we) gotta wait for them to come,” he said. “Hopefully the stuff will be here by summer and we’ll have it installed.

“We’ll have some of the stuff installed,” he elaborated. “You can’t do everything. And it’s costly. It’s very costly. It’s going to cost $100m to deal with the transmission and distribution systems. It’s very costly.”

When asked if the Bahamian people should expect that these kinds of outages will continue throughout the holiday season, Mr Maynard initially said “no,” then said whatever occurs will be dealt with.

“It’s not gonna happen…When it happens, we’re gonna deal with it. We deal with the situation.”

When asked specifically if what happened on Thursday could happen again Christmas Day, for example, Mr Maynard replied: “Yea, of course. I mean, God got you through the summer.

“We on the graces of God right now. That’s what it’s about. It is what is…It isn’t a situation where we just got into this. This took years and years and years.”