Posted by Lisa Wells on September 06, 2001 at 06:35:26:
In Reply to: Fire in Nassau - Beaumont House, et al. destroyed posted by K. Eva on September 05, 2001 at 08:08:10:
Hello:
Shark attacks, fatal plane crashes, devastating fires and daily power outages...not exactly what you expect from a care free island paradise. They say good things follow bad, let's hope that's true because we've certainly had enough of the bad.
After assessing the horrific destruction of the Straw Market fire, Minister of Tourism, Tommy Turnquest declared Tuesday's Bay Street inferno a national disaster. And a disaster it is! One of our most important ministries has been severely interrupted and numerous businesses suffered tremendous, if not total, loss. The fire fighters did their best to extinguish the blaze, but unfortunately they were poorly prepared and ill equipped. The water not being available at first, then at too low a pressure and the inability to immediately pump water directly from the harbour are all indicative of the somewhat disorganised state of affairs of many of our public services.
This "disorganisation" has spawned another problem, and it is taking a great toll on our economy. That being the outrageous number of power outages during the last month. On the surface this may seem a small thing but it ruins the productivity of numerous businesses and disrupts the lives of everyone affected. God Bless the people who lost their businesses in the fire only to come home to no electricity to cook or bathe with.
It *just* should not be that difficult to maintain power for an island of this size and population. It is easy to point to two broken generators as the problem. But that's not the problem at all. It is mismanagement, a lack of proper maintenance and the sorry state of affairs of another of our public corporations. I have heard people say, "Even California has power shortages." But truthfully there is no comparison between our situation and the one in California. They are running at full capacity and still can't generate enough power; we are only running at one third of our capacity. There's a big difference between incapacity and incompetence. I mean it's not like this is BEC's first summer doing this. You'd think with a billion dollar national budget and almost thirty years into the game we'd know how to keep our lights on.
Gee, I hate to sound so negative but, as hard-working Bahamians, don't we deserve better? I think we do. :- )
Thanks for taking the time to read this newsletter and for visiting Bahamas B2B.
http://www.bahamasb2b.com/
Cheers,
Lisa Wells
lisa@bahamasb2b.com