As a monopoly enterprise, The Bahamas Electricity Corporation has the right and capacity to charge the consumer top dollar for its services. This is precisely what it has always done, thus the report of profits year in and year out.
As in other instances of monopoly power in the marketplace, BEC is apparently answerable only to the government. An extreme instance illustrating this point came in the aftermath of last weekﾴs protracted island-wide blackout. The Corporationﾴs laboured explanations were painful, to say the least about them.
For as long as most Bahamians can remember, they have been obliged to cope with load shedding by the Bahamas Electricity Corporation. As is the case with any such enterprise, the paying public has no recourse but to continue to pay, if they want the service. If this was all there was to the matter, the hard-pressed public would grumble, pay up and that would be the end of the matter.
The reality of the matter, however, is that things are not so cut and dried. Even when BEC is unable to deliver the goods, the public must still pay. A case in point involves last Thursdayﾴs calamitous shutdown, when hundreds of thousands of Bahamians and visitors alike, were subjected to no end of personal distress. Indeed, some estimates suggest that the tallied costs could run into the millions of dollars.
What makes this catastrophe particularly galling for the public and most embarrassing for the Corporation is that it comes on the heels of so much hype. As everyone remembers, any number of high-ranking officials at BEC went to great lengths to get their kudos for a job well done. Much of those deserved congratulations now seem more than hollow. All of the goodwill gained in the rate reduction went out in the blackout.
The Corporation can do better, and should. As is now quite evident, there is room for extensive improvement in the management systems now in place. There is also ﾖ quite evidently ﾖ room for major improvements in physical plant. Obviously the maintenance programme of the Corporation is sadly lacking and needs to be reviewed to better serve consumers.
While we dare not pontificate on the technical matters involved in the generation and distribution of electricity, we venture that a part of the Corporationﾴs failure today is noted in past neglect of adequate forward planning. Additionally, our surmise is that successive administrations are to blame for not having in place appropriate contingency plans.
Editorial, The Bahama Journal
