As we go to press tonight, tensions between the Belize Energy Workers Union (BEWU) and the Belize Electricity Limited (BEL) have flared up, even as the company faces a challenging four months ahead in maintaining the supply of power to the national grid, due to uncertainties over its supply from Mexico.
BEL’s main power supplier in Mexico, Comisión Federal de Electricidad (CFE), has indicated to the company that for the next four months, it will not be able to supply BEL with a firm amount of power, which means that BEL has to look internally to keep a constant supply of power to customers in Belize.
According to BEL, CFE plans to suspend Belize’s full supply as of this weekend, Friday, May 8.
BEL has turned to Belize Aquaculture Limited (BAL), based in Stann Creek, with which it had brokered an agreement to purchase 15 MW of power generated by heavy fuel oil earlier this year, but that is nowhere close to the amount of power it gets from Mexico.
That country’s state company supplies Belize with as much as 43 megawatts of the peak demand of 74 MW. The challenge for Belize will be, battling it until the rainy season sets in and boosts the generation of hydropower, which also accounts for a large amount of the power supplied to the national grid.
In its recent press release, BEL has advised customers to please conserve power, to trim demand for electricity.
Meanwhile, our newspaper today received a copy of a letter from BEWU president, Sean Nicholas, to BEL CEO Lynn Young, taking another aim at BEL on allegations that the company has unfairly shut down the Magazine Road plant to get rid of workers who are aligned with the union.
Nicholas’s letter, copied to the Labor Commissioner, the media and the Minister of Energy, demands that BEL rehires six workers who the union claims were unfairly terminated.
The union claims that BEL has reopened the Magazine Road plant this weekend with newly hired workers.
“To make matters worse, during your negative treatment towards employees and their union, we would like to bring to your attention that consumers’ electrical appliances and equipment are being placed at risk due to inexperienced personnel you have running the plant in key operation positions,” Nicholas charges.
Referring to the impending suspension BEL claims will come from CFE, Nicholas writes that “…again, the power station will have to be used over the following four months and further into the future as a part of contingency measures.”
He then goes on to appeal to Young to rehire the six terminated workers.
While BEL has not issued a public statement regarding the latest communication from the BEWU president, Amandala contacted BEL’s Corporate Communications Manager, Dawn Sampson, this evening for comment.
Sampson disputed Nicholas’s claim that the Magazine Road facility was reopened and she told Amandala, “We are no longer using the plant.”
She also told us that the company does intend to respond to Nicholas’s May 6th letter; however, BEL, says Sampson, continues to stand by whatever it had said when the issue was last raised – that the company has no plans to use the Magazine Road facility, because it malfunctions and has lots of problems.
They had used the facility temporarily in April, said Sampson, but that was for a project in which BEL was facilitating another company.
Judging from the tone of the BEWU letter, however, it is clear that the union is growing even more frustrated over the fact that its demands for the re-employment of the terminated workers have so far not been met – a conflict that dates back to late 2008.
The union has not announced any plans for industrial action, though it notes in the correspondence to Young that the matter has been referred to the Labor Commissioner for settlement.
The flared tensions between BEL’s union and management comes at a time when consumers harbor concerns as to whether the company will, given its recent announcement of supply suspension from Mexico, be able to keep power flowing consistently across the national grid, and keep the lights on, or whether they will suffer a string of power outages, and many hot days and dark nights in the months ahead.