For the past two weeks, residents braved the summer heat and night sweats, as a result of the blackouts, which came every two or three days.
Neighbourhoods such as Sea Breeze, Sandilands Village Road, Elizabeth Estates, Pine Yard Road and practically the entire Eastern area, have been affected by the outages which lasts for hours at a time.
“Hey, I am paying my bill. Please leave the light on,” a resident of Pine Yard Road complained to the Guardian on Monday, after a blackout on Sunday which lasted several hours.
The Guardian tried to contact The Minister of Works and Utilities, Bradley Roberts, as well as General Manager of The Bahamas Electricity Corporation, Kevin Basden, to find out what problem the corporation is having with regard to being consistent with their supply of power to the eastern area.
The Pine Yard Road resident said, that the electricity goes off in his area ” all the time, and it went off twice last night. I have a big problem with this. The water goes with electricity. People who have to go to work the next day are thrown off schedule because their alarm goes with electricity. The food gets spoiled in the fridge. They need to hurry up and do something about this.”
A resident of Sandilands Village Road, speaking under the condition of anonymity said, she had just returned home from the beach on Sunday evening, when the blackout occurred.
“I was itchy and scratchy and could not get that salt from off my body. I came home shortly after 8 p.m. and was not able to bathe until after 11 o’clock. I was already tired and sleepy and one of the candles fell down onto my chair and start burning the chair. I was sleep. I didn’t even see it fall, but the heat woke me back up and I was able to catch it before things really got too bad,” she said.
She said that the electricity has been cutting off every two three days, for the past several weeks. ” One night, my fan did not start spinning until 5:30 in the morning. By that time, I had not slept all night because I was tossing and turning in my sleep, for the heat. I opened the windows but the nights are too humid. My computer gone completely bad now, because of the frequent power outages. It does not even come on anymore,” she said.
She said that en route to her house, there are lights all around but as soon as she hits Sea Breeze, the lights are off.
For a resident of Elizabeth Estates, she told the Guardian that when the electricity went off, she could not properly prepare for work the following morning.
“I have a major issue with this. This threw off my schedule and I was not able to iron my clothes for work until very late, and by that time I am usually in bed. Let’s not forget how the air conditions and computer gets damaged by them cutting the lights off and on like that. What can they do when our food gets spoiled in the fridge and what about the small business persons who don’t have generators or who don’t have money to buy generators? This effects everybody,” she said.
Adding that the corporation also needs to take the livelihood of beauticians into consideration.
“They have people under the dryer or with perm or shampoo on their heads. It happened to me before! I had to wait until the current came back on to dry my hair, and the other people had to wait for the water to come back on. They need to hurry up and fix that problem that they have and why is it only happening in the east?,” he said.
By: BY VANESSA C ROLLE, Nassau Guardian Staff Reporter
