By ANNELIA NIXON

Tribune Business Reporter

anixon@tribunemedia.net

Eleuthera residents are voicing a mixture of bewilderment and concern over soaring Bahamas Power & Light (BPL) bills that have increased significantly amid persistent power outages.

Keyshna Kemp told Tribune Business she cannot understand how the BPL bill for her gym business, Transformation Fitness, has doubled, while that for her other venture, Da Wash House was lower in comparison. While the gym is tied to her home, Ms Kemp said electricity consumption has not increased at all.

“The fitness and the house are on one thing, and it’s been consistent,” she said. “Nothing has changed. I assure you, nothing has changed. The AC don’t be on over there at the Fitness Centre all day long. When clients go in, they’ll have to turn it on, because we make sure that it’s off.

“We have washers and dryers going all day long [at Da Wash House]. The gym is closed on weekends even. Nothing has changed. There’s no way that my house bill should have doubled. What has changed? I have one child. Like how you have three, four, five kids home for the summer, I have one child who’s in his room. His room does not have air conditioning. The air conditioning is in my room, and one is next door in the gym.

“Nothing has changed. Why has this doubled compared to Da Wash House? I mean, this has always been an unnecessary high compared to Da Wash House. I don’t understand how the house bill doubled. It’s easy for them to say, ‘Well, you have more children home’. I have one child. I can’t see it,” Ms Kemp added.

“You can say the AC is on. My AC is always on. It was on two, three, four, five, six months ago. It was on ten months ago. Maybe if I had just bought an electric car, and I hooked it up to the house to charge, then I could understand this drastic increase in bill. My mind tell me open it and look this morning. I could not believe what I saw.”

A Harbour Island resident, speaking on the basis of anonymity, said that in two years of living on the island “I have had in one month, at least a $300 increase”. They said they have taken the necessary steps to equip their home with energy efficient appliances only to still receive a high electricity bill, and asserted that they have had to read their meter to ensure accuracy by BPL.

“I changed my bulbs to energy efficient bulbs,” they said. “So I’ve done everything possible to cut down. I have inverter AC units. I’ve changed out the AC units. I’ve had the AC units serviced, and all of my appliances are energy efficient. I just got a new energy efficient refrigerator. So I don’t know what else I could do differently, really.

“I cannot confirm, but I have heard from a customer that whatever the fuel charge is.... let’s just say it’s $5. They’re going to multiply that by the amount of days in the month. It may have been an accurate reading last month, but rather than coming out and giving a current meter reading, they had guesstimated it based on the previous usage. So they’re just using that and multiplying it by the amount of days in a month. That’s how they’re coming out with the figure.

“Personally, I used to check my meter constantly. I stopped checking my meter because what can I do? Not pay BPL and then just get turned off? I already visited BPL for false meter reading before and they had to extend me a credit by two months because they were guesstimating my bill,” the Briland resident added.

“I made them come out and read my meter. I made them come out and change my meter because, at one point, they gave me a bill for $900. I am that detailed. I used to read my own meter.” The resident also attributed the higher bills to surges, adding that “it has to recharge back up to the right voltage”.

“I want to know if they have plans to introduce Pike on the Family Islands,” they said of the US entity contracted to upgrade New Providence’s electricity grid. “Because, again, I cannot confirm, but I was told that Pike is only for Nassau.

“I wanted to know if they plan to introduce Pike on the Family Islands, and if they think that would make a difference with our issues being experienced on the Family Islands which, of course, the islands are larger but less populated, so it should be easier to handle.”

Shaena Lewis, a Briland event planner, said she has passed up about 15 orders due to the fear her electrical equipment will be ruined and she will not receive reimbursement. She said: “Yes, it’s money, like $300. But my machine cost $6,000. BPL is not going to compensate me.

“I work for myself,” she added. “I’m self-employed. And my business, I deal with a lot of machines, and my power box, what I just bought like last month, it blew. It don’t even want to turn on. So I scared to turn on any of my printers, because a few years ago, I lost all my machines.

“BPL didn’t give me any money back. My Grammy been dead about seven years, and she’s still waiting for a TV. So I’m not going to plug in my machine. So I’m losing money and the power still going off 20 and 30 times a day. So I don’t even know why I have that bill that high.”

Ms Lewis said her latest BPL bill also skyrocketed despite the power barely being on during the prior month. She added that a BPL representative, when she inquires about the high bill, replied: “‘Everybody’s bills are like that’. The lady was like, ‘My bill even high and I work here’.

“We can’t even use no electricity because the electricity been barely on,” Ms Lewis added. “The power was going off 20 and 30 times last month. I can’t even do no work. And then I went away for like, two weeks, so I wasn’t even there.

“And I have an open floor apartment. I have one fridge, one freezer, my machines, but I wasn’t even working like that, so I don’t even understand how my bill went from being average of $100-something to $390, almost $400. That’s atrocious. And like I said, the power don’t be on in my little space. I literally have about a 10 by 10 apartment.

“Normally, my bill is like $119. I was like” ‘I’m not going to rush to pay that. It’s fine. I’m just going to pay with the next bill because I normally pay the bill on the last day of every month’. And my bill was like, $300. It was a Friday and I was like: ‘I’m going to pay it on Monday. It’s fine. It won’t hurt’. I saw the guy by the meter box, but I didn’t think anything of it, because I was like, my bill $300. That ain’t going to hurt nobody,” Ms Lewis added.

“They turned my power off. And I’m like, ‘y’all have the audacity to turn people off... you saw me sir’. You didn’t even say ‘I am disconnecting’ or whatever hell he was doing. You saw me. You didn’t even have the decency to say, ‘Hey, I’m disconnecting today. Y’all could go and pay your bills.’ They didn’t say anything. So they just turned me off. And the power, like, literally never on. He was like, ‘Oh, I just work here. Ain’t nothing I can do. I have to do my job.’ It’s been so disrespectful, so atrocious.”