By LEANDRA ROLLE

Tribune Staff Reporter

lrolle@tribunemedia.net 

WORKS Minister Desmond Bannister yesterday blamed recent power outages in New Providence on bad weather and technical issues, saying such power failures are problems officials “can’t plan against”.

He said officials can only work towards ensuring the impacts are minimal.

Bahamas Power and Light customers continue to express frustration with frequent power cuts, with some noting the issue has affected students who are using virtual learning platforms and even some small businesses.

By The Tribune’s count, there have been more than a dozen outages – including an island-wide blackout and other widespread cuts over the past three weeks since September 1.

Service disruptions continued on Monday affecting customers in parts of New Providence.

Asked about the issue by reporters yesterday, Mr Bannister admitted that while the power company is “going through growing pains”, it still has reliable generation.

He said yesterday: “I don’t know if people are outraged. BPL is going through growing pains. They have reliable generation. Yesterday, they had a lightning hit, something that you can’t plan against.

“Last week, we had an island-wide outage because there was a problem with one of the fuel tanks. These are challenges that you can’t plan against, but they are challenges that we have to work to ensure that we minimise.

“In this season and time of year, we can’t do anything about lightning but what we can do is ensure that first the public is informed quickly, that is the duty of Mr (Quincy) Parker there and secondly, to ensure that we respond on an urgent basis and that’s what BPL has been doing.”

Last summer, residents in New Providence suffered almost daily load shedding since June 19.

The power provider added a new engine to its Blue Hills Power Station in March of this year, in a move officials said would help improve the country’s energy production.

At the time, BPL chairman Donovan Moxey called the new GE TM2500 engine a “game changer” for BPL and the Bahamian people, adding it will aid in fixing long-standing problems experienced by BPL consumers.

Yesterday, the minister also urged BPL customers to pay their utility bills.

“BPL is very concerned about people who are able to pay and who are not paying. If you’re able to pay I would urge in your best interests to pay. If you’re not able to pay, I would urge you to make an arrangement with BPL,” he said.