By TANYA SMITH-CARTWRIGHT

tsmith-cartwright@tribunemedia.net

BAHAMAS Power and Light chairman Dr Donovan Moxey announced that the power company has advanced its customer service unit so citizens with unclear land titles can now have access to electricity.

Speaking at a press conference held at BPL yesterday, Dr Moxey expressed excitement about upgrades in the corporation’s customer service unit which includes an indemnity agreement for those seeking electricity on properties that might be in commonage or tied to other family members; an expansion of the call centre and the beta testing of a mobile app.

As for the indemnity agreement, Dr Moxey said too often BPL was the target of lawsuits, accused of encroaching on the land of others. Customers were also turned away because their land titles were not clear cut.

“We at BPL are very excited about some of the developments within our customer service department over the last several months,” the BPL chairman said. “We are excited to announce the fact that for our customers in the Family Islands, mostly, and also in New Providence we’ve included a new agreement as part of the onboarding process and that is the indemnity agreement.

“One of the challenges that many of our customers have faced is they didn’t have clear ownership or title to their properties and so as such, BPL under its existing policies, had a difficult time in providing them electricity services.

“What we’ve done, recognising their challenges with respect to land ownership, with respect to commonage property, government Crown land grants, many persons were building on these lands but had a very difficult time getting electricity from BPL. What we’ve done is created an indemnity agreement. This allows that particular customer to connect to our services and if there is a dispute regarding the land, then they would agree through that agreement to essentially indemnify BPL.”

He said this is a significant issue experienced, especially in the Family Islands.

BPL has launched its new call centre with longer hours and has said that the new system has already assisted 7,000 more customers.

“The other very important thing that we want to announce that we are excited about is the expansion of our customer service function at BPL,” Dr Moxey said. “As many of you would know, we introduced the call centre some months ago at BPL. That call centre has been working extremely well for us.

“Since that call centre was introduced we’ve been about to train about 60 percent of our customer service personnel within the new policies and procedures of the call centre. Of course you know we had expanded the call centre hours from 7am to 7pm.”

He said new software was put in place to better manage calls.

The call centre can be reached at CALLBPL (225-5275).

BPL is currently carrying out beta testing for a mobile app that is also connected to the customer service unit.