By NATARIO McKENZIE

Tribune Business Reporter

nmckenzie@tribunemedia.net

COMPLAINTS were widespread throughout the Bahamian business community yesterday after electricity and telephone services were disrupted for hours, with one major retailer telling Tribune Business: "It's like the Bahamas has gone backwards."

The disruption in electricity service, as well as the Bahamas Telecommunications Company's (BTC) landline and cellular services, adversely impacted business operations for most of the day. Phil Lightbourne, owner of the Gladstone Road-based food retailer/wholesaler, Phil's Food Services, told Tribune Business that equipment at his business had been damaged by frequent power disruptions.

Mr Lightbourne said: "This is ridiculous. Phone service is down, you can't call your suppliers. BEC keeps kicking in and kicking out. We have lost an automatic switch because of BEC. I lost both of my compressors for my air conditioner on top of my roof from power surges from BEC.

"It's like the Bahamas has gone backward. This is really bad for business. It's like we are not ready. We are spending money on the roads, but the most important things - to communicate and light up the world - are the things we are falling back on."

BEC said in a press release yesterday that there was a surge on its system at 8.14am yesterday, which resulted in the island wide outage. It added that the cause of the island-wide outage had been isolated to a a problem on its transmission network, and by noon power had been restored to all areas of New Providence.

The loss of telephone service, cellular and fixed-line, had perhaps the greatest impact, with Bahamian businesses complaining of being unable to reach suppliers or employees in the field, and not being able to be contacted by customers.

Bernadette Whylly, owner of the travel agency Convenient Travel, told Tribune Business that the whole ordeal was a major inconvenience for her operation.

She said: "There's certainly a loss of revenue when you can't service your clients. It's extremely inconvenient. It certainly did impact us because we have had to turn clients away. Our phones have been off and on."

Chris Lleida, chief executive of Premier Importers, told Tribune Business: "Cellular service being down in today's modern world is worse than the land-line being down. We do a good bit of business over the phone. Customers want to check on orders that they have placed, when deliveries are scheduled, price checks and quotations. There is a cadre of different things that the phones are integrally connected to."

Geoffrey Knowles, operation manager at Aquapure, told Tribune Business that his operations had been impacted by disruptions in cellular service since Friday.

"Today I can't get in contact with anyone," he added. "Power was off for two hours, but that didn't bother us too much because we have generators. It's been chaos. We really can't do business. It's difficult to contact our drivers, customers, trying to gets shipment lined up, everyone uses cell phones. It's been total chaos, Friday and today."

Steve Hoffer, chief executive Hoffer Sport, one of the largest sporting goods outfits in the country, told Tribune Business: "We really weren't affected that much retail wise except that some of the credit card machines weren't functioning properly. We couldn't get approval on some of the charges. I didn't really lose much business because of that."