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PM: Light & Power ‘ought to compensate’ for outages

by Randy Bennett
3 min read
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Light and Power may eventually have to compensate customers who were without electricity during Tuesday’s and Wednesday’s rash of blackouts, Prime Minister Mia Mottley has suggested.

At a follow-up meeting with managers of the Canadian-owned electric monopoly at Ilaro Court, she is said to have told the executives that householders and businesses affected by the power cuts would be interested in being compensated for their inconvenience and losses.

But it was not immediately clear whether the company would grant automatic compensation for power loss, following an expected board meeting today. Under current utility rules set by the Fair Trading Commission, BL&P grants compensation only on affected customer’s presentation of a formal claim for distribution system faults in excess of eight hours.

Prime Minister Mia Mottley

Mottley told a post-meeting press conference that while she understood the BL&P’s main focus was on ensuring that it could provide the country with electricity on a consistent basis, the issue of compensation could not be disregarded.

Her comments came moments after Rick Janega, the chairman and chief operating officer of Light and Power’s parent, Emera Caribbean, revealed that no decision had yet been reached on whether customers would be given a rebate.

The Prime Minister said: “There is no doubt that the most important thing is for the power not to go off again and that is what the BL&P is focusing on today, but we have also indicated to BL&P that the people of this country are going to ask these questions.

“While we accept and thank them for not passing on the costs of the rental to the population, the reality is that that is one component to the process and therefore we have simply asked Emera Caribbean to recognize that the country is going to ask these questions the same way they have asked them of the Barbados Water Authority.

“The short answer is that they have not addressed it yet; they’ve only addressed the question of the stability of the electricity generation.”

Last night, Mottley disclosed that Light & Power’s board was to meet to discuss the compensation issue.

But when Janega was asked if any decision had been reached in that meeting, he said it would be dealt with at a later stage.

He told journalists: “I’m not privileged to speak about the actual discussions in the board meeting but the approvals we received today that were in support of bringing confidence to citizens of Barbados, to ensure that we bring generation in as quickly as possible and understanding that our company will absorb the costs of those rentals and not the customer.

“We also advanced discussions on approval for the additional generation facility that we have been working on for some time and have been working with the Ministry on advancing approvals for that.

“We understand the importance of it [compensation] and our BL&P team will look into it and will access it and we will be talking to our customers, but our first focus primarily is to restore the confidence of the facilities that we are operating to assure Barbados that the system is functional.”
randybennett@barbadostoday.bb

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