The reduction in the price of oil is not being passed on to consumers. It is a sham. It is being used to pay the huge, over 100 million back bill BEC has for fuel. It is being used to pay BEC workers the highest wage and benefits
In the public sector. In your beloved Long Island it is being used to pay for the vehicles that BEC workers take home every night, that they use as their own personal vehicles to go to the grocery store, to pick their children up from school and yes to even launch their boats when they want to. I see it all the time and it is disgusting. i saw the general manager here use one to lauch his boat and then he left BEC's vehicle on the ramp so no one else even had use of the ramp until he came back from fishing. These BEC workers in Long Island act like little princes, untouchables, who are basically stealing from poor BEC consumers, and the corporation and govt allow them to do it!

Was this contract put out to tender? Who received this contract , we taxpayers deserve to know? How is it possible that it cost $ 500,000 to renovate one large classroom and a bathroom? An entire new building could be constructed for half that. Again we the taxpayers get ripped off. We should seriously consider a voucher program for education in this country. Give each parent a voucher to educate their child at the private school of their choice and disband completely the bureaucratic nightmare that the ministry of education is. Our students would have better test scores, a better school environment, and save taxpayers millions of dollars. New Orleans did it after hurricane Katrina and it has worked.

Bank of the bahamas shares are for all intents worthless. The bank was in violation of the central bank's minimum liquidity requirements for months before this bailout with resolve occurred. Without the bailout the bank would have been insolvent. The govt has paid the interest on BOB preference shares for the last year otherwise they would have defaulted. And there is no end to the red ink in sight. It has too many branches, has too many employees, neither of which it can reduce because of political interference. It was grossly mismanaged, and still retains for the most part the incompetent board responsible for this fiasco. There has been zero accountability save the eventual force out of its incompetent former director. This is why governments should not own any bank shares. The only saving grace for shareholders is that the govt will not let the bank go bankrupt, so the shares will meander for years where they are, never reaching zero but no chance of appreciation. As for the poor bahamian taxpayer that is another matter, we will be lucky to get 40-50 cents on the dollar for the 100 million bailout.

Every day I question the so called independence and competency of URCA. Urca seems to have it in for cable, issuing opaque, contradictory rulings that do nothing to enhance competition in the Bahamas. Cable should have the right to constuct if they see fit a completely independent system of towers from BTC. Btc has inferior infrastructure, leading to inferior service so why would a modern, efficient company like cable want to be tied to such an infrastructure. Not to mention in the event of a system wide failure in our cell service, which BtC has had several times, would it not be in the national interest to have a completely redundant system that we could depend on. URCA in their rulings seem to want to discourage competition to the benefit of the 49% govt owned inept BTC.

Excuses, excuses, and more excuses. Meanwhile there are thousands of bahamian homes without electricity because they can not afford it. Does this corrupt, caring , believing in bahamians fraud of a PLP government think about them as they enjoying their air conditioned homes each evening. We should completely privatize BEC and remove any iota of influence from our corrupt, inept, politicians.

Birdie never let the truth get in the way of a good talking point ( lie ). While 40% of the port is in the hands of 20 families, there are more individual bahamian shareholders in the port than in any other company in the history of the Bahamas, all made possible by Hubert Ingraham who gave salary advances to civil servants to buy shares. Bahamians could have owned some of BTC as planned by Ingraham but the PLP cancelled the share offering when they came into office. They have no interest in seeing the average bahamian become a shareholder in the wealth of this country, only for the select few. All for me baby.

Get a phone line from cable.

Relax! All this article is doing is quoting verbatim from a press release from the GBPA concerning the regulation of energy prices for 2016-2019 for Grand Bahama. At no point in the release is there a mention that the power company is considering a rate rise. The headline to this article is not representative of the release and the headline is in no way is supported by the article itself. Read for yourself here:

http://www.thebahamasweekly.com/publish…

Oh Birdie you are so right. The FNM really screwed the bahamian public over cable Bahamas. They made it possible for cable to be 100% Bahamian owned with over 2700 shareholders. They made it possible for NIB to own 22% of cable and the treasury to own 7 %. They made it possible for me and thousands of bahamians to take part in the IPO and buy cable at $1 per share which today closed at a split adjusted $22.50 per share. That is only an increase of 2250% - How horrible! Cable has appreciated over 100% in the last year, allowed me to retire at 43. Do I sound bitter! Needless to say me and all the other bahamians feel screwed by FNM. How dare they empower and believe in bahamians. Now tell your beloved PLP to give the second cell license to cable so me and 2700 other bahamians can get shafted some more just like what the FNM did to us.

Exactly, there is an exclusive club in this country filled with prominent FNM and PLP, who protect each other and grant favors that the common man can only dream about. My father purchased a piece of property in Nassau from the mother of a former deputy prime minister who was granted it by the crown for $1, needless to say my father who was never granted or given anything in his life paid the real price the property was worth. Such corruption! Dr. Minnis clearly has a serious conflict of interest and should resign, Mr. Miller should pay his BEC bill in full, neither will happen because they are in the good old boys exclusive club, one you and I and most hard working, taxpaying bahamians will never be in. Until bahamians condemn
corruption regardless of party affiliation this country will continue to deteriorate. The FNM and PLP elites are slowly but surely destroying this nation for their own selfish advancement.