The Tribune

By EARYEL BOWLEG

Tribune Staff Reporter

ebowleg@tribunemedia.net

THE president of the union representing staff at Bahamas Power and Light said he thinks the recent resignations of BPL CEO Whitney Heastie and Director of Human Resources Evis Missick had been “a bit late coming,” adding workers were “disrespected” for too long.

Bahamas Electrical Workers Union President Kyle Wilson said for more than two years, the union had been strongly agitating for there to be a systematic change in the executive level or directorship level of the company, especially human resources.

“We felt as if the company was not operating in the true spirit of industrial harmony,” he said in an interview on Friday.

“There was disrespect to the union, disrespect to the workers, disrespect to our industrial agreement, and just operating just unilaterally as if a union didn’t exist. This would’ve led to many publicised demonstrations, many public industrial actions, and sick outs from the union. The atmosphere at BPL was one of, I mean frustration, anger from the workers. A lot of people felt as if they were in Alcatraz almost when they came to work daily. The feeling now is one of elation. It’s one of a new day. Persons feel a sense of relief and you know it gives hope that tomorrow will be a better day in the company,” he said.

Last Thursday, BPL announced that its board of directors received resignation letters from Mr Heastie and Mr Missick effective April 21. The board accepted the resignations.

“I think the new chairman is making the correct decisions on behalf of not just the workers but the Bahamian people because we believe that decisions that were made by the executives were not in keeping with the best decisions that were before the Bahamian people in terms of reliable sustainable energy. . .If we look at the past weekend during the holiday there’s a lot of power outages to the frustration of the Bahamian people and these are direct results of poor management,” Mr Wilson also said.

Mr Wilson said the union wants the government and BPL to review the Wartsila deal as “millions of dollars” were spent to give a foreign company an opportunity to produce power in The Bahamas. In 2019, BPL invested about $95m in acquiring seven new generation turbines from Wartsila, in addition to building infrastructure at Clifton Pier to house them.

“To me it’s a failure in my opinion because there’ve been lots of issues getting the plan up to standard, getting up to full running capacity, and there have been many outages as a result of that particular deal,” Mr Wilson said. “So the average Bahamian person doesn’t know that there are independent power producers. They think it’s just BPL, but these are (where) some of the main issues or problems of infrequency in terms of reliability comes from.

“So, yes, the union would have been happy that those persons would have resigned because it allows the company to bring in persons who are worker friendly, who are union friendly and not to say ‘hey, we’re gonna give the union whatever we gotta ask for or the company is gonna be held hostage by the union’. No, what we want is for industrial goodwill for the labour laws of the country and the rights of the worker to be respected first and foremost. What we want is for the union to be made knowledgeable and a part of these deals that go on.”

On Friday, Tribune Business reported that Free National Movement Leader Michael Pintard branded Mr Heastie’s resignation as “worrisome” and also raised misgivings about growing suggestions that Shevonn Cambridge, the Utilities Regulation and Competition Authority’s (URCA) head of electricity supervision, was viewed as the leading candidate to replace him.

Asked about whether Mr Cambridge was a potential good fit, Mr Wilson replied: “Thus far, I think the chairman is making the right decisions to move the company forward. I can’t speak to that per say, but what I can say about Mr Cambridge is that he is a career BPL trained employee. He came up through the training programmes in BPL and he worked his way up the ladder properly. So Mr Cambridge knows the company by the back of his hand as he worked in the field and he’s worked into various different parts of the company.”

He also said: “If they feel as if he is somebody who can help steer the ship back to prosperity, to reliability, I have no problem with Mr Cambridge being one of the people that’s brought in. Mr Cambridge is currently, I think, one of the heads of URCA and...so he’s something that the country can use. I do not want to see us being foreign dependent in terms of leadership and we have young dynamic Bahamians, such as Mr Cambridge, who has worked in big US companies… and has brought experiences back to The Bahamas and is fully trained by BPL and, so, why not? If not, why not and he is someone who should be looked at to be honest with you.”

Mr Wilson added: “If it’s to replace Mr Heastie or to be a dynamic part of going forward, the union has no objection in that regard. There’s no objection from the union to have someone of the calibre of Mr Shevonn Cambridge brought back into BPL in the interim to make the changes that are necessary.”