In an interview published in today’s Nassau Guardian, Bahamas Electricity Corporation (BEC) Chairman Leslie Miller said BEC will lose significantly more than the $16.3 million he first projected it would lose at the end of this fiscal year.
It was last week when Miller said BEC would lose some $16.3 million for the 2012 fiscal year, ending September 29, 2012. At the start of the fiscal year the corporation projected a profit of $8 million. This is a swing in the wrong direction for a monopoly of at least $24 million.
This is the same BEC the Ingraham administration had to bail out by backing nearly a quarter of a billion dollars of debt it could not pay on time.
Miller said the losses are partly due to the money BEC spends on overtime. According to the chairman, over $11 million was spent in overtime during the 2012 fiscal year. Miller said overtime must be eliminated “by any means necessary”.
Miller is right that salary expenditure must come down, but more than that is necessary. What we are seeing in the disclosures of the running of the National Insurance Board (NIB) in the dispute between its director and chairman is also insightful as to why BEC is in such a mess. To put it bluntly, both the Progressive Liberal Party (PLP) and Free National Movement (FNM) have been engaged in the worst type of cronyism with public money. Friends and associates are allowed to raid these corporations in five-year cycles with little regard for proper management, budgetary restraint, common sense or decency. When the party wins, followers are put in place or elevated and they have a free hand to take as much as they want. Consequently, the corporations are harmed and tax dollars are pocketed by protected elites who are close to the political class.
The consequence of this kleptocracy is poor service delivery, backward services and financial instability in these corporations. When government’s change, the new administration likes to embarrass the last by revealing some of the malfeasance that took place before quickly setting forth its raiders to endeavor on their five-year campaign to take as much as possible.
Such lack of concern for the Bahamian people’s money is pathetic. Yet, it is our system of governance. Our decision makers must realize that this system leads eventually to collapse.
BEC is but an example of what poor leadership does and allows to happen. Bahamasair is no better. The Water and Sewerage Corporation and the Broadcasting Corporation of The Bahamas are on the same track.
Allowing this ruinous kleptocratic system to continue will slowly empty our treasury and place this state in a dangerous financial position.
Published by The Nassau Guardian