Belco inquiry
Government Sen. Walter Roban’s revelation last week that Government may hold a Royal Commission on the Bermuda Electric Light Company probably caused some puzzlement, not least in the offices of Belco.
That’s not because an inquiry into last July’s fire at the company’s plant is not justified, but because the decision, if one has really been made, has been so long in coming.
And it does seem as if the company has essentially done the right things since the fire occurred. Nonetheless, the fire did cause severe problems. The entire Island was without power for most of the day, and knocked Hamilton and hence most of the Island’s business and Government operations out for days, causing millions of dollars in losses.
The independence inquiry that Belco commissioned revealed several flaws, not least that fire suppression equipment was switched off inside the switch room where the July 14 blaze started. The equipment could have stopped the fire from spreading.
So Belco can be held responsible for that failure. But it has performed well since. It commissioned an independent report into the causes of the fire and made it public. And it has been working hard since to rectify the problems, including the construction of new switch rooms.
That is as much as anyone could ask them to do, and on the face of it, a further inquiry into the blaze itself would seem to be unnecessary and would take a good deal of time and expense. Belco chief executive Gary Madeiros speculated in a television interview last week that the Commission might instead be into the whole question of power generation.
Presumably this would include the use of renewable energy sources and energy conservation and the question of whether Belco should have a monopoly on power generation.
These are all valid questions, especially given that the world will almost certainly run out of fossil fuels at some point in the future. But it is hard to see that the questions require a full-blown inquiry when a lower level study would suffice. Mr. Madeiros did admit that he has not see the Government study that was done into the blaze, although one must assume that Premier Alex Scott had read it before he met with Mr. Madeiros in December.
If that report contained findings that Belco’s own report did not, then it should be made public, and quickly.
Former Minister Ashfield DeVent has been made deputy chairman, joining PLP spokesman Scott Simmons and former PLP Sen. Ira Philip as Commissioners. Former PLP candidate Elizabeth Christopher has been made chairman.
From a practical point of view alone, that may be too much: When the Commission must decide questions of political broadcasts, all four members would have to desist from voting, leaving a bare quorum to decide.
Political conflicts are not unusual. Before the 1998 election, the Commission, chaired then by Louise Jackson, who was not yet a United Bermuda Party MP, tried to bar political discussions on radio talk shows.
That decision was successfully challenged in court by lawyer Tim Marshall, who would become the Commission’s chairman after the election. But that act alone shows the dangers of political involvement in the Commission. It is a shame that the Government has not learned from that mistake.
