B.E.L. Hosts CARILEC Forum in Belize

Belize Electricity Limited is currently hosting the Caribbean Electric Utility Services Corporation’s 2015 Human Resources and Public Relations Conference in Belize City. The conference and others held frequently across the Caribbean are part of CARILEC’s ongoing initiative to network regional electricity suppliers and affiliated entities. Under the theme “Achieving the Synergies – Corporate Leadership, PR and HR,” the week-long conference features local and regional presentations on a wide range of topics. According to CARILEC’s Executive Director Allison Jean, it’s all about building capacity, as individual entities and as a united body.

Allison Jean

Allison Jean, Executive Director, CARILEC

“What we seek to do as a CARILEC body is to network the Caribbean through training programs, conferences, advocacy and stakeholder relations so that we can provide assistance to all of the utility companies and our other members in meeting the challenges of the sector, as well as to build capacity and strengthen the various institutions. Within recent times most of the Caribbean countries are going through some sort of regulatory reform, and that in the last two years has been a major focus for CARILEC, so we have created a position paper on regulation and renewable energy, and that has been advocated throughout. We’ve had about four regulatory conferences where we’ve invited ministers responsible for energy, multi-lateral organizations, C.E.O.s of the various Caribbean islands, consumer groups and various other stakeholders, so that has taken centre focus. However, every year we put on about four conferences in addition to the regulatory conference, and today we’re seeing one such conference which is hosted here in Belize…it’s on human resource management and corporate communication.”

Jeffrey Locke

Jeffrey Locke, C.E.O., B.E.L.

“The issues being discussed are mainly HR and PR and how they adapt to the introduction of renewables. One of the good things about CARILEC is that we get to share ideas, we get to share best practices, and in the case of Belize we are one of the countries in the region with the highest amount of renewables already, so we can bring some of the real life issues that we have experienced in introducing renewables to the table, look at some of the mistakes that we made, look at some of the good things we did and enhance what we’ve been doing in terms of the introduction of renewables. One of the things about CARILEC that people need to know, from B.E.L.’s perspective, is that CARILEC is a critical organization for us to be a part of, because we get to share ideas, we get to network and enhance different best practices, and we also get to lobby together.”

The conference ends on March twentieth.