Several hundred employees of the Bahamas Telecommunications Company are at risk to lose their jobs, according to Free National Movement (FNM) Chairman Darron Cash who said the government worked out a deal to allow Cable and Wireless (CWC) to outsource jobs in exchange for the employment of Leon Williams.
Mr. Williams, a former BTC Chief Executive Officer, recently became the special advisor to Phil Bentley, CEO of BTC’s parent company, CWC.
In a press statement released yesterday, the FNM’s chairman said Mr. Williams is one of the prime minister’s closest friends and that he is also being proposed as the new CEO for BTC.
“The FNM finds the prospect of such significant job losses to be against the national interests of The Bahamas,” he said.
“This FNM chairman has been reliably informed that part of the aggressive outsourcing deal will be the introduction of a new foreign company owned in part by communications giant Ericsson. The extent to which there will be Bahamian participation in the new company that Ericsson will control is not yet clear. We are also advised that as part of the ‘William’s Employment Deal’ significant chunks of BTC’s existing Information Technology (IT) operations will be outsourced to at least one company in Miami, Florida. Similarly, at a time when the local domestic banks are relocating jobs to our neighbors in the Caribbean, we also learned that jobs will be shipped overseas to a call centre in El Salvador, a Central American country. Clearly the Christie Administration is prepared to go to great lengths to create unemployment for their own people; just so long as it creates employment for one of ‘the boys.’”
Cash went on to describe the government’s alleged actions as “disgraceful”.
He said the government’s support for these proposed “job exporting schemes” would be an act of betrayal.
“A central part of Prime Minister Perry Christie’s legacy will be his shameless determination to go to any length to take care of his boys, his family members and other special friends by giving them high-paying jobs,” Mr. Cash said.
“Following the international news-making brazen act of political interference with CIBC-First Caribbean, where Mr. Christie used the power of his high office to assist a single individual.” he said.
The prime minister recently came under scrutiny when he announced in the House of Assembly that he intervened with a local bank in an effort to help Ishmael Lightbourne save his home.
Our news team contacted BTC’s Senior Public Relations Manager Jerome Sawyer who said that the company is aware of the FNM chairman’s press statement and that BTC has no comment to make on what he described as only “speculations and rumors.”
