President of the Grand Bahama Chamber Of Commerce, James Carey is weighing in on the impact frequent power outages on the island are having on the business community.

Carey recently told ZNS News, “this is just another set back.  We’ve had hurricanes.  We’ve had COVID.  We have the ongoing fight between the government and the Port Authority.  There’ve been other things and now we have an issue with power supply.  Of course there’s an outstanding request for an increase in the rate in power which in itself does not bode well for economic development.”

The Grand Bahama Power Company announced a rise in its fuel surcharge to $0.1389 kWh which will be reflected in bills starting this month.

Carey said, “it leads one to believe that the increase in the fuel surcharge is to make up for what may be lost from the revenue in just providing electricity as normal.  It really just salts the wound that already is there.”

The Grand Bahama Power Company has also been conducting load shedding exercises on the island to make up for challenges at its Peel Street station.  “We really need to see that there is a sufficiency of redundancy in place so that when something like this does take place that we’re not left to suffer the way we are,” Carey said.

Representatives of the Grand Bahama Port Authority and the Grand Bahama Power Company met over the weekend.  They assured that the company is working to rectify reliability issues by the end of the week.