CableVision?s outgoing general manager has launched a strong defence of his five-year spell in charge of the company.

Jeremy Elmas? reign was punctuated by labour unrest and fierce criticism from union chiefs, which flared as the company was trying to shift its reputation for poor service.

But Mr. Elmas, who is leaving Bermuda to take up a management post in France, claimed CableVision was in a much healthier state ? both in terms of staffing and technological improvements ? than when he arrived in 2001.

The American denied customer costs were unfair, said the call-out time for complaints had been cut and said the chances of industrial unrest had been ?greatly reduced?.

Mr. Elmas said the company was in ?extreme disarray? over staffing and technology when he arrived five years ago. ?I think it?s in a much different state now,? he told

During the height of the industrial unrest at CableVision in 2003, amid a three-day national strike, Bermuda Industrial Union workers called on Government to kick Mr. Elmas off the Island after two workers were sacked. Government rejected the call.

Now he is leaving the country ? and reports have circulated that his work permit was not renewed.

Mr. Elmas said a year extension was requested in February, but Immigration said he could only stay on for an extra three months.

That took him to the end of June, when Mr. Elmas officially left his post. No approach was made for another renewal, he confirmed.

The departing general manager said the search for his replacement started about 18 months ago. CableVision chairman Rod Hansen was keen for Mr. Elmas to move to France, telling Immigration officials as much last summer.

Mr. Elmas, who said in the past he wanted to stay on and train his successor, said there was a number of factors behind his departure.

?I was put here initially for a two year period. Since then my work permit has been renewed for three successive one-year periods.

?I have worked for Rod Hansen for 13 years. He has been wanting me to work in France for quite some time. There?s a lot of activity there at the moment.?

He said he was ?looking forward to a change? but admitted that events had been pushed to a head by the decision to only add three-months to his permit.

?We did not seek to renew it again,? he said. ?I believe the chairman said I would be gone and a replacement found at the end of my last one-year extension, which ran until the end of March. That could be some of the basis for the refusal to extend it another year.?

And he added: ?It?s time for me to move on. Hopefully someone else can step in and take CableVision to new heights.?

The long-running search for a replacement, however, continues, and Mr. Elmas said it looked unlikely a Bermudian would be taking his place.

Local advertisement led to just one application and Mr. Elmas said that person had no cable experience. Unless somebody with suitable experience applies who did not see the advert, or unless a qualified Bermudian returns from a spell off the Island, it looks like the job is going to an expatriate, he said.

Mr. Elmas, one of three long-term work permit workers among CableVision?s 40-strong workforce, was reluctant to be drawn on whether his nationality played any role in criticism of his management style in some quarters.

Asked if he was surprised by calls for him to be kicked off the Island, he said: ?You would not expect that to be norm anywhere. If people have issues, it?s normally with the policy not the person. I guess they were singling me out. I assume it was because I made the decision.?

Yet he maintained the question of who leads the company should not be a question of nationality. ?It?s how they do the job,? he added.

The American remembers that he had plenty on his plate when he arrived at CableVision in January 2001.

The year before he joined, workers gained union recognition; two months before he started the general manager quit. Two other senior staff had resigned a month earlier. A total of 12 channels went off the air in that period and one insider told : ?The entire company is just one big dispute, it?s drama after drama.?

?Essentially there was no management staff when I took over,? Mr. Elmas recalled. ?The outside plant had not been maintained at all and was fairly outdated.

?The company was in extreme disarray.?

Now, he said he leaves with the company in a healthier condition, with a strong management team in place. A new high speed DSL Internet service for computer users, 24 times quicker than dial-up, is due to be rolled out soon. ?This will be the fastest Internet service the Island has seen,? he revealed.

He said customer service had also improved.

?We can handle service calls quite quickly. The average is within two days. That?s dramatically changed from when I came here. We also keep a track on the number of outstanding calls and that?s not increased.

?We have added weekend and evening hours, so a lot of things have changed on the customer service side.?

He also pointed to the ?exciting? shift from outdated analogue to digital transmission across the Island.

Responding to critics who say that residents pay too much for cable, he said this was a common gripe in most countries.

?Wherever you go in the world, everyone always wants things to be cheaper ? cable is one of them.

?Each time we have done a rate increase people will say, ?how can you raise them? I?ve got all my bills going up?.

?But when people say that I think they have just explained it. That happens to be inflation.?

He accepts that people have problems with the fixed fee and that some would like to just pay for the channels they regularly watch, like football. But he said this was not possible because of contracts with programmers. ?They have to be sold in a package,? he said.

?We do a good job in keeping our costs down. The last increase was four percent over a four year period.?

Viewers have also been up in arms about coverage of high profile sporting events. One incident saw cricket fans hoping to catch the Ashes finale last summer left stumped by the screening of a low key West Indies match.

Mr. Elmas, who later said that competition from rival World on Wireless was good for the Island, warned that those situations might continue because he said Bermuda was ?insignificant? to larger right-holders used to selling to 70 million viewers not 40,000.

?We have brought a lot of new products to the market,? he said. ?But there will continue to be issues here we will have to sort out.?

Industrial unrest flared during the first few years of his time in charge, although problems have not been as noticeable in recent years.

Flashpoints included February 2002, when problems at CableVision were cited as one of the reasons why the BIU conducted a march and one-day national strike over alleged management disrespect.

Workers went on strike again in September 2003 workers after management accuse a worker of conspiring to string out overtime. A three-day national strike followed, which generated criticism in the community for harming post-Fabian unity.

In 2003, the BIU urged its members and the public to return set top boxes to CableVision in protest about the company?s behaviour, amid claims foreign workers were treated better than locals.

Company bosses said about 40 were returned and denied the allegations.

Asked about the chances of further unrest at CableVision in future, Mr. Elmas said there was always a possibility of disagreements.

?The chances are greatly reduced but I do not have a crystal ball. But we have put mechanisms in place to try and stop that happening. Things are dealt with before they get to a high level.?

He said CableVision had become less of a flashpoint for industrial relations in the last two years and he pointed to the fact that the last, low-key contract negotiations with the union were dealt with ?very expediently? over a four-week period at the end of the year.

?There were no walkouts. Not like previous years,? said Mr. Elmas, whose new job will be to oversee the roll out of France City Vision to 700,000 homes under the same chairmanship of Rod Hansen.

Damage wreaked by Hurricane Fabian was a ?massive challenge? he also admitted. The cable network had started to be revamped before the storm hit, so anything in the process of being upgraded or which had been replaced was destroyed.

?We had to start from scratch,? he recalled. ?We now had to replace everything, so in that sense the Island was well served by the hurricane.?

He said he would miss certain aspects of Bermuda but added: ?In this business there are much larger opportunities elsewhere.?

In a statement, CableVision said Mr. Elmas would continue to work closely with Mr. Hansen, to ensure the transition to new management went smoothly.

And Mr. Hansen said: ?Jeremy helped lead Bermuda CableVision through a period of significant technological change, including paving the way for the introduction of our high-speed data service.

?He is responsible for a significant improvement in quality at CableVision, bringing the company to a world-class level.?