An island-wide power outage caused major problems and serious economic losses for residents and businesses in New Providence on Thursday.
Some residents recall this being the longest island-wide power outage, not due to a hurricane, in Nassau's history. The power outage affected over 65,000 customers in all areas of New Providence with some customers being without electricity from about 5:30am until nearly Midnight.
As expected, BEC executives were unavailable for comment. Numerous calls, throughout the day, to the money losing, poorly managed, government-owned corporation were met with busy signals. Later, when the lines were answered, callers were greeted with the usual discourteous attitude and nobody at the corporation could explain what had happened. Rumours are that a transponder between two power stations blew out, causing a ripple effect among the generators. This has been the excuse offered for many previous blackouts as well.
It is understood that BEC's management will eventually offer any number of lame excuses as to why they would lose power for an entire island for 16 hours on a calm, sunny day. But it really boils down to the incompetent management of the corporation.
Angry business owners and residents of New Providence are again calling for the removal of BEC General Manager, Bradley Roberts, whose management team's incompetence has become a national liability.
