Nationalization not good for B.E.L., says C.E.O.

And in respect of the take over to Telemedia, G.O.B.’s apparent knee jerk reaction to concerns on how a commercial dispute precipitated its acquisition of the telephone company came in the form of a release on Wednesday. It stated that the nationalization related to telecommunications and not to power and water. But that is not providing any comfort for the electric company. B.E.L. expressed on Wednesday and again this morning on Open Your Eyes, it’s general unease. C.E.O. of the utility company, Lynn Young, says that he made it clear that although some people may think otherwise, he believes private ownership is the best option for the utility. According to Young, the drastic changes that come with being nationalized have never been good for B.E.L.

Lynn Young, C.E.O., B.E.L.
“When it comes to the question of B.E.L., yes there’s some people who feel that it should not be privately owned or they would think it would not be better off privately owned. I have worked at B.E.L. under two different—well we’ve only had two different political parties in government—I’ve worked under both and I have worked under the private environment and I far prefer the private environment. I think the company has made much more progress under the private environment, it’s been more stable too because when it’s owned by a government, you find that things change kind of drastically every time there is an election and change of government. You find that there’s a change at the top management of the company, there are changes in the policies. Not to forget also, that you end up with people being pushed in the company that are not competent to do the job that they should be doing. And in some case you have cronyism taking place and being forced to buy certain things from certain companies. And those kind of things happened when the company was owned by the government and we had have to have gotten rid of those kinds of things. I’m not saying that every minister of energy did that, but it’s a crap chute. You didn’t know when you’re gonna get a good minister of energy and when you’re gonna get a crazy one.”