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.

Amazing that Wells and his wife find themselves in this position after all the years they've practised law and acquired assets. Seems like receivership could have been avoided but they pussyfooted around probably believing that the claimant would go away but didn't. Wells misjudged his opponent and now will pay a steep price for it, perhaps to the extent of not being able to practice law until the debt is paid off. What a fall from grace.

Miller is part of the problem not part of the solution. His good friend and former Works Minister Brave Davis was the person in the PLP government who spearheaded bringing Powrt Secure to these islands to take over the management and operations of BEC for $900,000 per month. We were given to understand that Power Secure had all the answers and would come in with the manpower, expertise, money and capability to rectify and solve all of the problems with our power systems and with the operation of BEC, so much so that despite protests by Miller decrying the need to bring in this foreign company to run our electricity system, his colleagues had so much confidence in him and the job that he had done that they didn't leave him on the Board of BEC but shipped him off to Water & Sewerage Corporation. By the way, notice the difference in the PLP's attitude: we can't have foreigners running/managing/owing our communications systems but it's okay to turn over the reins of our national power grid to a bunch of foreigners with a new wind from the Carolinas. Miller and his PLP cohorts could have done much more to promote solar energy and the use of new technology. But their mindset was to keep BEC big and bloated and then at the 11th hour before the election float the idea of free electricity for certain unspecified categories of users. The old saying that there's no free lunch applied to that idea as the question like with NHI is how and who is going to pay for it. They were already killing the middle class in this country by coming down hard on tax collection while giving free passes and waivers to their friends and supporters. Miller did a lot of talking but despite all of his talking we never saw any real results at BEC or Water & Sewerage.

The government needs to be very careful on how it negotiates or gives away expiring or expired concessions in Freeport without ensuring that it obtains the best possible terms for the governance of Freeport and the rest of Grand Bahama. Although the Communications Act and the Electricity Act are national pieces of legislation that apply to any service provider in those industries in any part of the Bahamas, you have Cable Bahamas and Grand Bahama Power who take the position that they are not subject to these laws and refuse to pay the government and the regulator millions of dollars in licensing and regulatory fees. Then to add insult to injury, these companies and their lawyers want to tout the Grand Bahama Port Authority as being some sort of regulatory body in Freeport. If journalists and others actually read the Hawksbill Creek Agreement they would see that the Port Authority is only a licensing agency for doing business in Freeport and selling land in Freeport. As far as servicing East and West Grand Bahama with electricity, the Power Company claims to have entered into agreements with the Ingraham administration to provide electricity in Grand Bahama besides Freeport that extends the benefits of the HCA to these additional communities. Amazingly Grand Bahama is the only island in the Bahamas that has no regulator to protect communications and electricity consumers. It is unseemly for the government to allow this situation to continue especially when it has enacted laws to protect these consumers but is being prevented from doing so by two companies hell-bent on inflating their profits at the expense of poor Bahamians.

I agree with Porcupine that the government should nationalize the web shop gambling business so that the majority of the financial benefits accrue to the country and not to a few people who flaunted the criminal and gaming laws of this country to their personal benefit. If the government is going to continue to tax them, then the tax collected should be in the 75-80% margin and not whatever it is now. The operators should be allowed to keep a profit of not more than 5% of their income after payment of expenses including salaries, rent, payouts, etc. The current system is ridiculous and only benefits the owners and no one else.

Somehow, some way, our Customs and Immigration services are failing us as well as the Customs and Alcohol/Tobacco/Firearms services of the US government. How is it that these guns are finding their way out of the USA into the Bahamas and none of these governmental agencies on either side seems able or interested in doing something about it? I'm sure if Bahamians were exporting guns and ammunition into the USA there would have been multiple extraditions and allegations of the Bahamas supporting or failing to prevent terrorism. However, as the flow is in the opposite direction and Bahamians must be spending money in the USA to buy these guns, are we to believe that the Americans are happy for the revenues? The Bahamian government mustvbecome much more aggressive about the prosecution and sentencing of persons found with unlicensed firearms and ammunition, particularly assault weapons like an AK-47. We should not succumb to the stupid argument of licensing businessmen and others to possess handguns and other weapons. We don't need more persons on the street with guns, licensed or otherwise. We should strive for zero tolerance on the possession of firearms. Guns are designed for one purpose: to kill and to severely injure, and either we are going to get serious about taking them off our streets or we should get out of the game. If a magistrate believes that a case involving a gun demands a greater sentence than he or she can impose, they they should remit the matter to a Supreme Court judge for sentencing as permitted by the Criminal Procedure Code.