Abrupt power outages that lasts for hours and hours, damaged electronic goods and appliances due to constant power surges and irate local folk that perhaps would not prefer to bear the blazing heat during the hot summer nights; these are all adverse effects imposed on innocent electricity consumers due to apparent deficiencies and inefficiencies at the publicly owned power utility in The Bahamas. Energy privatization has been part and parcel of a recent world trend that has placed greater reliance on market forces and less dependence on government in the allocation of resources. The Bahamas Electricity Corporation should be privatized because it will increase work efficiency, introduce much needed competition, and attract foreign investment capital to sustain the growing power requirements of the Bahamian population.
Privatization, in its broadest sense, is the transfer of assets or services from the tax supported and politicized public sector to the entrepreneurial initiative and competitive markets of the private sector (Reed, 1).
English: Parliament of the Bahamas, located in dow...
English: Bahamanian Prime Minister Hubert Ingraham...
Summary Created by Rarelibra for public domain use...According to the Oxford English Dictionary, privatization is the transfer of a business or industry from public to private ownership. In either case privatization would be a universal solution with the many problems common to BEC.
The evident inefficiencies in the administration of BEC have no doubt led to serious deficiencies in the public service that they provide. Almost on regular basis electricity consumers have to contend with intermittent electricity supplies that sometimes cause damage to very expensive electrical products. Indeed, there has to be some management problems associated with this equation. In a newspaper article aptly titled, "Seven power cuts within 24 hours...," Member of Parliament, Mr. Brent Symonette was reported expressing indignation over BEC's inefficiency during a meeting of the House of Assembly. He also stated that the electricity supply to his home on the Eastern Road was disconnected seven...