The Tribune

By KHRISNA RUSSELL

Deputy Chief Reporter

krussell@tribunemedia.net

WHILE the government boasts of having slashed arrears payments considerably over the last 10 months, one debt owed has yet to be satisfied at all.

According to Finance Minister K Peter Turnquest this $39m debt is related to the Bahamas Telecommunications Company’s legacy Defined Benefit Pension Plan.

It is based on the terms of the Shareholders’ Agreement between government and Cable & Wireless Communications, BTC’s parent company.

The deputy prime minister said the 2019/2020 budget makes provisions for $3m to be put towards this debt, but he did not make clear what the government’s plans were to fully satisfy it moving forward.

“While the government continues to make good progress in settling the outstanding arrears, the level remains a significant percentage of outlays in the upcoming fiscal year,” Mr Turnquest said in the House of Assembly on Wednesday.

“One important obligation yet to be factored into future arrears payments is the requirement for the government to meet obligations relative to the BTC legacy Defined Benefit Pension Plan, based on the terms of the Shareholders’ Agreement between the government and Cable & Wireless Communications.

“It has been determined that the government never provided the $39m to the Feeder Trust that was created to assist in meeting its obligations to the plan, when the corporation was sold to Cable and Wireless for $210 million in April 2011.

“To commence meeting these obligations, the government has provisioned $3m in the FY2019/20 budget and over the course of the year will seek to devise a multi-year comprehensive strategy for settling the balance, once the full obligation has been determined. The government will seek to provide an update on this matter in the upcoming Fiscal Strategy Report.”

Recently Dino Rolle, the Bahamas Communications and Public Officers Union’s (BCPOU) president, told Tribune Business he saw the company’s 2011 privatisation as a “colossal failure”.

Further, he said all BTC staff - not just his members - viewed as “extremely offensive” warnings by the company’s chief executive that unproductive employees should be “anxious” over their job security.

The line staff union’s chief argued that Garfield “Garry” Sinclair lacked sufficient evidence to judge which BTC employees were failing to add value because the carrier had lacked performance management metrics “for the last three to four years” prior to the recent introduction of its Pearl system.

Mr Rolle blamed BTC’s plight on Cable & Wireless Communications’ (CWC) failure to properly prepare the incumbent carrier for competition and find new growth opportunities since acquiring a controlling interest in the company.

He added that CWC had “shrunk not only the workforce but BTC’s ability to compete” with upstart rival Aliv, which has already seized more than one-third mobile market share in just two years since its November 2016 launch.