Dear Editor,
The time has come for us to raze BPL.
Your standard dictionary defines the word “raze” as a verb, when means, “to demolish, destroy, and/or burn a building or structure completely to the ground”, and this is precisely what needs to be done to Bahamas Power and Light, aka BPL.
Now, by no means am I calling for an act of arson to be carried out, but, the time has certainly come for this Godforsaken facility located at Clifton Pier to be completely and permanently removed and replaced with a much more efficient and reliable source of power generation, because for far too long, we, the beleaguered people of The Commonwealth Of The Bahamas, have been forced to suffer from the complete and utter unreliability of BPL.
I am a resident of Sandilands Village, located on the eastern side of New Providence, within the Seabreeze constintuency, and I absolutely kid you not, it seems as if the electricity goes out every day here, sometimes three or four times a day. I cannot count on my two hands how many times I have had to pull my refrigerator’s plug out of the socket to avoid any kind of power surge damage. How nany people have had their appliances damaged or destroyed as a result of these ceaseless blackouts? I myself had to dispose of a television after it shorted out; does BP pay for our damaged appliances?
I find it amazing how our government in power, be it PLP or FNM, can brag about the “great things” they have done while in office, trying their darned best to make The Bahamas look good to the international press, when they have failed miserably to address the issue of power generation and sustainability in this country. For decades, we have had to rely on diesel generators, with absolutely no alternatives for power generation. And for decades, this power company formerly known as the Bahamas Electricity Corporation, has done an excruciatingly poor job of maintaining these antiquated generators. If they did, then we wouldn’t see so many blackouts and power disruptions. If they did, there would be no need for “load shedding”. “But, what about those new Wartsilla generators they brought in?” What about them, indeed. Nothing more than a publicity stunt, or, as we Bahamians say, a “puppy show”.
Well-known political activist, now a running candidate for fledging third party Coalition Of Independents (COI), Graham Weatherford, had tried to warn us Bahamian people about those aforementioned generators, but we did not heed his words, and now, here we are.
Just imagine: you pay hundreds of dollars for your electricity, hoping your payment is enough to keep the lights on for at least another week, only to discover that you have no power due to either a blackout in your area or an island-wide blackout, with it lasting for hours. Do the powers that be ever stop to think how frustrating and distressing this is on us, the Bahamian people? Evidently not!
What is desperately, desperately needed in this country is alternative energy. We need it more than anything else, certainly more than yet another hotel or resort. We are a tropical, archipeligic nation located in one of the hottest regions on Earth, why, in the name of God, are we not utilizing solar energy? It is hot and sunny for the majority of the year in The Bahamas. The sun is a limitless source of power; a solar plant is an obvious choice for the solution to our power generation problem. If this government had any sense, they would have made this their top priority, for what is a country without a power energy provider? A backwards joke of a country.
Because of BPL’s atrocious track record, this is exactly what The Bahamas is quickly becoming. Whoever wins the next general election, be it PLP, FNM, or even the COI, I, and many, many other Bahamians, hope that the government can do away with what we’re currently stuck with, and build a world-class solar energy generation plant, or any alternative energy facility that can finally make all these blackouts and load shedding a thing of the past.
It’s time to raze BPL.
Written by: Sleepless in Sandiland Village
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