“WARPATH – BPL union doubles down threaten PM” – The Nassau Guardian

Except from this article; “Leaders of the managerial and line staff unions at Bahamas Power and light (BPL) yesterday demanded the government intervene regarding BPL’s plans to reduce the staff complement, warning that failure to act would result in Prime Minister Dr. Hubert Minnis returning home in darkness.

‘You are not going to be riding around in your Range Rovers to Buckingham Palace to have tea and crumpets, right, and the people are getting put out to pasture.’ Said Bahamas Electrical Workers Union President Paul Maynard at Bahamas Communications and Public Officers Union headquarters at Farrington Road.

‘The prime minister is supposed to come back on Sunday.

Well, he may land in darkness.”

Let me first say that these threats by the union chief seem oddly reminiscent of past threats by another union boss wherein he had threatened to turn New Providence into a “Little Egypt”; at this time 2010-2011 the city of Egypt was experiencing extreme internal turmoil where a large number of that population demonstrated against poverty, corruption and political oppression; the question is exactly does Paul Maynard wish to achieve with these threats?

Mr. Maynard says “….a failure to act would result in Prime Minister Dr. Hubert Minnis returning from London, England to meet New Providence in darkness.”, let me first ask the union boss is he not even considering a sit down with the prime minister after the prime minister returns before he carries out his threat of holding the people of The Bahamas hostage for services that they will still be billed for?

As the prime minister’s plane approaches the Sir. Lynden Pindling International Airport from the north to line up with the runways, the prime minister should easily be able to identify his home in this ‘darkness’ that is being ‘warned’ of, due to the fact that he has generators; my point is this and is very simple, Mr. Maynard and his cohorts, who probably also have generators also, will only be hurting and probably fall out of favor with the very same persons whose interests they claim to represent or be protecting – this tactic is an old one and has long been played out for one simple fact – because you cannot disenfranchise the very people with whom you wish to gain favor, it does not work that way in The Bahamas anymore.

It would be considered heartless not to empathize with the people being made redundant by this move to an automated system by BPL and I personally would rather deal with an actual human being while making enquires at the cooperation but it would seem that the company is progressing and making the necessary adjustments but the Bahamas Electrical Workers Union would have you believe that persons are just being thrown out onto the streets without any further consideration and this is representative of the truth as “BPL’s CEO Whitney Heastie advised, that BPL intends to offer employees ‘attractive’ voluntary severance packages (VSEP’s) and no employee will be forced out.”  

So as union boss Paul Maynard rants about the ramifications of the right sizing of the cooperation he is not be honest with the people of the country and with those that he represents when he intimates that persons will be put onto the streets and let to ‘die’ and this in verified in the story “BPL moving forward with ‘rightsizing’ despite threats” and make no mistakes these are threats that border on acts of terrorism.

END