If my memory serves me correctly, the late Prince A. Strachan got the contract to construct that building back in 1974. Is it cheaper to remediate the problems or is it cheaper to demolish and rebuild or as suggested above, put a parliamentary complex there and/or new prime minister's official residence. Although one should remember that the Pindling administration purchased the Royal Victoria Gardens complex for the purpose of constructing a new parliamentary complex. Seems like it's time to make some decisions about the General Post Office building, the Royal Victoria complex and the Rodney Bain building (Sassoon House) on the corner of Parliament and Shirley Streets all of which are owned by the government but are totally or partially abandoned as is the old magistrate courts building on the corner of Bank Lane and Shirley Street. And while we are at it, maybe it's time to refurbish and upgrade the library building between Bank Lane and Parliament Street that started out life as the prison and bring it into the 21st century.

The Gaming Board needs to be authorized to resolve these types of matters through binding arbitration. As matters currently stand, a court suit would take a long time and even longer with appeals, possibly all the way to the Privy Council if the decision goes against the deep pockets webshop owners. Maybe they can send the matter to the Utilities Appeal Tribunal who are not doing much of anything these days. Just rename it something else and send the matter there for resolution. So is Paradise Games saying that the Iowa and Indiana state lotteries pulled some shenanigans on bettors similar to the one pulled by Paul Newman and Robert Redford on Robert Shaw in the movie "The Sting"? The burden of proving any shenanigans is on the webshop.

Interesting story and good to know that Mark is involved in tennis coaching. Probably inherited that from his mother. On another note, what is Roger Smith doing these days? Wasn't he involved in coaching in California or something such?

Instead of being open, transparent and accountable for its actions, URCA has become a secretive, closed-lipped organisation that hardly publicizes its activities. URCA fined BTC millions of dollars for power failures that was supposed to be paid to BTC's customers as compensation for lack of service but in a magnificent act of low-key misfeasance gave the money to NEMA. They have appointed/reappointed friends, family and others to the board but haven't made one announcement about it. You wouldn't know unless you looked it up on their helter-shelter website. They changed the law and instead of board members serving for a maximum of two terms before rotating off 3 years, they can now be appointed until they choose to come off, die or are removed for breach of the law. The staggering of terms of board members has gone by the wayside. URCA is so-called consulting the public on the draft Consumer Protection Plan of Bahamas Power & Light but other than publishing it on their website, the public has not gotten one word from URCA about how BPL will compensate them in the event of damage to appliances or what the timeframes are for new installations. While URCA is prohibited from regulating BPL's electricity rates for 5 years from 28th January 2016, it does not mean that URCA cannot regulate BPL in other areas. They were quick to jump down on BTC and fine them for power failures affecting the phone systems but BPL has almost daily and some days multiple power outages but not one peep from URCA about what it is doing or has done in the public's interest to regulate BPL on this issue. No fines, no disciplinary action, nothing but silence. URCA told us in its annual plan that it had outsourced its electricity regulation needs to foreign consultants so in that situation it should not have impacted their ability to complete projects in 2016 or even 2017. The board has lost its way and is only concerned about self-perpetuation for the salaries and benefits. Time to change that and focus on the people's interests with real regulation instead of excuses.

Whoa, you are going far Oracle and giving them more credit than they deserve. The people on the board have no clue about how to develop technical capability and as a consequence have pursued a course to promote friends, family and others. Any analysis of the so-called 30% staff attrition shows that they would have had little to do with impacting the organization's ability to deliver on projects. The real problem impacting the organization's ability to deliver on projects over the past 5 years has been a lack of leadership at the board and management level. The previous government got elected on a mandate that URCA had too much power that needed to be reduced. Consequently that is the path that the organization has pursued since 2012 and the quality and completion of projects since then has declined. URCA keeps using excuses such as the cellular liberalization and now the regulation of electricity have impacted its ability to complete projects. Not true. The timeframe for cellular liberalization was spelled out in the law by the Ingraham administration from the time of the sale of BTC in 2011 but URCA was not ready for it when it became possible in 2014 and further unnecessarily complicated matters. Then URCA knew that it would be regulating electricity from December 2015/January 2016 when the Christie administration enacted the Electricity Act but waited until late 2016 before advertising for the Director of Utilities and Electricity and did not appoint anyone until March 2017.

These guys at URCA can't even get BTC and Cable Bahamas to provide high speed internet throughout every island in the Bahamas at a price under $40 a month but want us to believe that the Bahamas is "uniquely positioned" to enhance its status as a centre for information and communications technology based on the 3 subsea fibre optic cable systems that run between here and the USA? Please! The other thing is that this conference is called the Global Symposium for Regulators (GSR) for a reason. It is organized by the ITU and as anyone knows, The ITU is an agency of the United Nations, so the conference is really a gathering of communications/ITC regulators speaking about high level policy matters on behalf of their governments. These sessions are not open to the public nor do they invite public participation. There is no evidence to show that for all the GSRs that URCA has attended over its 8 years of existence that it has resulted in any enhancement of the country's status as a centre for ICT or enhanced the country's economic role.

As a country, we continue to get involved in complicated matters while relying on a simplistic mindset that says because a particular type of person is behind the venture then nothing can go wrong. So we have project after project where someone gets screwed, primarily by not getting paid for goods and/or services provided to someone else. Modern business practices requires that people like those behind the Fyre Festival put their money where their mouth is and secure performance or other bonds so that no one is left holding an empty bag if the promoter, contractor or whoever is unable to fulfill their end of the bargain. Obviously Tourism or whoever did not do their due diligence and simply took the Fyre Festival guys at their word without fully analyzing the actual prospects of the event. Seems like the dormitory at BAMSI and a thousand other ventures that we've had that did not come to anything. Can anyone say Ginn, the I-Group , Bahama Mar?

When they have finished their misfeasance investigations at the prison, NIB, and elsewhere then they need to head down to URCA and check them out. In 2015, URCA fined BTC several million dollars for failure to keep their phone services and Internet services operative during successive power outages in 2013 and 2014. In arriving at their decision, URCA said that some or all of the multi-million dollar fine was for BTC to compensate its customers who were deprived of services throughout the Bahamas for 4 hours or more as a result of BTC's failure to have taken corrective action to prevent power outages at its Poinciana Drive plant. However for reasons best known only to themselves the URCA board decided that rather than have BTC compensate its customers they would pay the money over to NEMA in a move I suspect was designed to ingratiate them with the political directorate to whom some of them owed allegiance for having appointed them to the board. URCA has no power under its own legislation or any law affecting the sectors that it regulates to take money collected as fines for the benefit and compensation of the public that keep these overpriced communications companies afloat and give that money away as if it was URCA's own money. If that was what they were minded to do then they should have consulted with the public and found out whether the public was in agreement with this proposal. Instead no questions were asked of the public, the money just went to NEMA so the board members could engage in a photo opportunity to massage their egos and public profiles but to this day no one knows how or on what the money was spent.

Power Secure obviously is not the answer to our electricity woes. $900,000 per month and what is any different from what we have had to endure in the provision of electricity by BEC since the 1970's? Power Secure was supposed to come in and improve on what we had but no sign of that anywhere on the horizon. And having them regulated by URCA seems a monumental waste of time, money and resources. URCA is not doing anything about BPL's rates only focusing on sale of excess solar and other power to the grid which the small man will never benefit from as solar panels and batteries are not something he can afford, so only businesses and rich home owners will benefit from this program. Likewise, URCA has apublic consultation going on over BPL's consumer protection plan but the public would be hard-pressed to even know that the consultation is going on. URCA published information about it on their website then in typical fashion went absolutely quiet about it. Not one public meeting, no ads in the paper or on TV, no discussions about it on the call-in shows, nothing. Why? I suspect they don't want to explain any of it to the public or take any heat from the public over the nonsense that BPL wants to perpetrate on the the public like when URCA were dealing with the price increase application by Cable Bahamas. This is not how URCA is supposed to operate; they are supposed to act in the interest of the public and keep the public fully informed and engaged on anything that comes across URCA's desk that might adversely affect the public. All they have done is changed the law to benefit themselves while forgetting their mission and purpose. Time for a change at the top.

All accountants have to do is look at their roles in things like the Enron scandal and others that caused and led to changes in the rules. Yes the client might be paying your fees but in the case of publicly traded companies, who has a responsibility to the investing public if the management and directors are corrupt? So the auditor should just take his fees and say nothing or not be required to report to the authorities charged with protecting the public interest? I think not.