The Tribune

By MORGAN ADDERLEY

Tribune Staff Reporter

madderley@tribunemedia.net

ALTHOUGH Bahamas Power and Light chairman Donovan Moxey has proclaimed safety concerns are a reason the power company does not preemptively release load shedding schedules, Commissioner of Police Anthony Ferguson yesterday declined to verify the claim. Mr Moxey claimed when schedules were published in the past, there tended to be a “spike in criminal activities” in those areas.

Meanwhile, National Security Minister Marvin Dames dodged direct questions on this claim, eventually saying he had no information about the “BPL situation”. However, he noted blackouts are a “real concern for law enforcement”.

Mr Dames added if officers are “pre-warned” of a blackout, police indeed “shift their resources as needed and where necessary”.

Both Commissioner Ferguson and Mr Dames made these comments on the sidelines of the Royal Bahamas Police Force’s youth summer programme opening ceremony. New Providence residents have suffered through almost daily load shedding since June 19. This despite Mr Moxey saying earlier this year that officials did not expect load shedding this summer.

Many locals took to social media to vent their frustration at going hours without power in the sweltering summer heat, while demanding, at the very least, a schedule for when power cuts will occur.

Attempts by The Tribune over the weekend to establish a schedule for outages yielded no results.

Mr Moxey addressed the schedule matter during a press conference held at BPL headquarters yesterday morning.

“One of the things that we’ve done, and we’ve had this discussion a number of times internally, is there’s a safety issue when it comes to that,” Mr Moxey said. “And so even though power is important for our customers, what’s more important for us is our customers’ safety.

“And so what we’ve found in the past is that whenever you do publish a schedule then there tends to be a spike in criminal activities around those particular areas.

“And so what we don’t want to do is put our customers in potential harm’s way by publishing a schedule and allowing people who (do) criminal activity to be able to essentially plan their targets.”

When asked to verify to these claims, Commissioner Ferguson replied: “I really don’t want to comment on any kind of thing that involves something in a different lane. I can tell you that members of the (RBPF) are up and about. They are doing their jobs and we will continue to do that. That’s as much as I will say in respect to that.”

Mr Dames dodged questions on this matter, repeatedly asking why reporters wanted him to comment on this issue.

“What’s your intent really?” Mr Dames asked the press.

“I don’t know anything about the BPL situation other than we had outages and they sent out communications to that effect.

“BPL had concerns…you know. I mean, they had concerns. I can’t comment on what they would have said.”

When asked if this was a concern for officers, Mr Dames replied: “If police officers have concerns…you know…I mean, there are always indicators from time to time that you come across. If you have a situation where there’s a total blackout, that’s a real concern for law enforcement….But I can’t comment on what was said, and I think that’s what you’re looking for, me to comment on that.”

Regarding whether in his experience, there has been information to show that power outages lead to an increase in crime, Mr Dames said: “Well there’s potential. There’s always the potential. When we have hurricanes, for example, that’s an opportunity for criminals to take advantage of a natural disaster. And we’ve had situations such as that.

“And so I think your question would be whether their concerns were legitimate? I mean yes. I think it’s a legitimate concern. I mean, if there is a total blackout and an island-wide blackout, if they do certain things, there may be a risk that other things may happen. That’s not uncommon. But where are you driving at? I suspect there is something you need some clarity to.”

Mr Dames said while he does not have the statistics to measure whether these recent blackouts have contributed to an increase in crimes, he added there is always “a risk that persons will take advantage of (a) blackout”.

“If officers are pre-warned of a blackout, or if a blackout happens suddenly, you know, officers are advised, and the police will shift their resources as needed and where necessary,” he added. “And this is common, this is Policing 101.”

During the press conference, Mr Moxey added BPL is working to “as best (it) can” that once load shedding occurs, to inform people in affected areas and “give some estimated time ranges in terms of how long their power will be off”.

“We’re looking to set up community groups within WhatsApp communications and once that’s available -we’re securing that telephone line now- once that’s available we’ll communicate that through,” he said.

“And so we do know that these various communities have community groups, community watch groups, they have constituency groups. And so we want to make sure that when we do have information to push out, rather than just going to our Facebook page or our other social media sites, we can also send it directly to these WhatsApp groups so they can disseminate the information appropriately to all who’s affected.“