By LEANDRA ROLLE

Tribune Staff Reporter

lrolle@tribunemedia.net

NEWLY appointed Bahamas Power and Light chief executive officer Shevonn Cambridge last night defended his new appointment, insisting that all necessary protocols were followed before he assumed the senior role at the power company.

Last week, BPL announced Mr Cambridge, the former director of utilities and energy at the Utilities Regulation and Competition Authority’s (URCA), as the power provider’s new CEO.

The move came weeks after former BPL CEO Whitney Heastie and human resources director Evis Missick resigned from the company.

However, questions have been raised about the “objectivity” of BPL’s decision given Mr Cambridge’s background.

According to Opposition Leader Michael Pintard, the URCA Act - the regulator’s governing legislation- stipulates that its executives must undergo a year-long ‘cooling-off’ period upon leaving the agency before they can take up a post with any private sector entity, they once were responsible for supervising.

However, this condition can be waived if approved by URCA’s Board, which is appointed by the government.

Asked about this yesterday, Mr Cambridge said: “I think there are some misunderstandings with regard to the purpose of the cooling off period, but I can assure you that all of the relevant provisions of statute has been complied with so I think the concern is kind of moot or unwarranted at this time.”

When pressed if his appointment was approved by the board, the BPL CEO added: “All of the necessary provisions of the URCA act were complied with me coming over to the utility. The board would’ve considered it and they would’ve passed whatever resolutions were necessary to give effect to that decision.”

Mr Cambridge’s appointment comes at a time the utility is struggling to finance capital upgrades and maintenance ahead of peak summer demand.

It also comes amid concerns about soaring inflation and rising fuel costs, with fears that BPL light bills could increase sometime later this year.

“The rising fuel cost is something that’s a global concern,” the BPL CEO said when asked how the power provider plans to mitigate rising fuel costs.

“We don’t have that much control over that aspect of it but we can control the basket the fuels that we utilise. I know the prime minister has also placed some emphasis on the integration of green and renewable energy mix and if we’re successful in doing that then we can drive the costs down a bit, but other than that, there are a number of other tools available to us and we’re exploring hedging options and changing the different fuels in the basket, as I said. That would give us some what we call physical hedging options.”

Meanwhile, in recent weeks there have been complaints about frequent power cuts throughout New Providence.

Asked about the cause of recent outages, Mr Cambridge could not say yesterday, noting that he had not yet been fully briefed on the situation since assuming office last week.

“I can’t really speak to the power outages because I haven’t been briefed by the team. I know about the ones in the last two and three days and they were all weather related and I’m getting updated on those and the teams are actively out, they’re trying to correct the situation for all and we’re going to take the necessary preventative measures to try and mitigate these outages,” he said.

“…What we’re going to do is implement some reliability centre maintenance programmes that’s going to be focused on preventive and mitigative type things as well as we’re going to be doing some capital works that are going to enhance the efficiencies in our system so basically through performance monitoring and maintenance data analytics, we’re going to hope to drive down the current rates that you’re seeing.”

According to BPL, Mr Cambridge spent 25 years at the Bahamas Electricity Corporation, working through the ranks of assistant engineer, senior manager, regional manager, assistant general manager and deputy general manager prior to his appointment at URCA.

“At this critical juncture, Cambridge brings a methodical level of leadership, experience and qualifications needed to manage and champion the transformation envisioned for the company,” the company said in a statement last week.