Bahamas Power and Light customers were unable to pay their electricity bills online for over a week after BPL failed to pay the company that facilitates online payments.
Whenever customers complained, BPL blamed the service interruption on technical difficulties but insiders tell the Gallery, that’s not really the case.
After the company shut the bill paying component of the site down, workers in the Accounts department were scrambling to find the bill to pay it.
The US-based company was selected over a local company by IT Director Sebastian Carey, who was brought in by BPL CEO Whitney Heastie.
This isn’t the only vendor BPL is struggling to pay.
Small contractors providing services to BPL have been running behind the broke power company for months to get paid. However, BPL has been cutting them cheques for a small fraction of the outstanding amount and promising to make future payments at a later date.
Last year, Works Minister Desmond Bannister alluded to BPL’s poor financial state.
“You know in good times BPL has $90m each month in arrears. Ninety million to 100 million in good times,” he said.
“BPL can’t go to the public treasury and say I need $10 million or I need $20 million this month for fuel.”
Comments