From:TheBahamasWeekly.com
Fenestration and Glass Company Letter to the People of Grand Bahama
By Steve Howes
Mar 15, 2010 - 11:35:25 PM
Dear People of Grand Bahama,
I am righting this letter to inform
you what is really going on and what the future may be for this Island.
Three years ago my partners and I
decided
to invest In the Grand Bahamas. After getting the necessary permits
and license's, no easy feat in itself, we purchased property on Queens
Highway and started building the production factory. This factory builds
hurricane protective windows, security glass and decorative glass for
doors. During the construction of this large factory we realized just
how much we liked Grand Bahama and its people. We had plans to also
build a rubber gasket factory in China but decided to put it into our
plans here for Grand Bahama instead. Our business plan and potential
work force was multiplied ten fold, potentially bringing more than three
hundred jobs locally, giving Grand Bahama a huge economic boost it so
desperately needed.
Since then, plans to build a factory
in joint venture with a German company to manufacture solar panels are
in place, we already have the Port Authority license and the land picked
out. Potentially another hundred jobs in construction and two hundred
factory production jobs. Our German joint partners are here next month.
Three years later, two factories are
now in production and growing larger every week. The window factory
has started exporting finished goods and companies here no longer have
to import hurricane products. They are made on this island by local
people for local people.
Our rubber factory has five production
lines installed, two are in production now running twenty four hours
a day for three days a week and eight hours on the fourth day. We are
adding new people almost every week (24 just this last month) giving
them training in careers never before seen in the Bahamas. The sales
of our products are growing worldwide even in this bad economy. That
is due to the wonderful quality of our product made by our local people
and the good sales force we have built across the world. In the last
few months we have grown our production from thirty five thousand feet
a week to over two hundred thousand feet per week, a fantastic achievement
by our personnel. We have had visits from perspective customers from
Germany, Switzerland, UK, Canada, USA and other countries who want to
buy our products giving us a real future as a large international
manufacturing
company.
Unfortunately with GREAT REGRET I have
to inform the people of Grand Bahamas that future is not going to be
here due to The Grand Bahama Power Company.
Ever since we started to build our
factories and then opening and running of our business on this island
we have been tricked, lied to, overcharged and had our equipment
destroyed
over and over again to the point of having to run on our own generator
to power our factories. The Grand Bahama Power Company in our opinion
runs this Island without any control by the government or the Port Authority.
It acts like gangsters to any body who stands up to their intimidation
and bullying. They say we owe them one hundred and twenty thousand
dollars
when in fact they owe us more than one hundred and seventy thousand
dollars but of course they deny that (although we have proof) and say
they are not responsible for anything or the damage that they do. They
even had the nerve to charge us thirty thousand dollars as a connection
charge on top of a deposit.
Do you remember the recent town hall
meetings for all of the people so fed up by their antics? They hired
a public relations company just to appease the public and tell them
what they wanted to hear. Nothing has changed. They still turn
off the power of the old, sick and families with babies without notice
who can not pay the excessive overcharging. It's easy to see how they
care about the people in West End now making them come downtown to pay
their power bills. For over ten years they have promised alternative
energy. They still are promising. If they can't do the job they should
go, right?
MR. ADAMS... one of their lawyers has
sent us a threatening letter and a
cease and desist demand
stating
that we can not run our own generator to power our factories and yet
they (the power company) can't supply us the power we need without
spiking
our equipment and stopping our production. Every time we have
spiking and outages (almost a daily occurrence) it costs us thousands
of dollars just to re-start up our lines and pay for the lost product.
They charge six times the price of power in North Carolina, 5.8 cents
per kwh, (where we are moving to) and three times the price its costing
us to run our own generators. They are in absolute panic that other
commercial customers will find out the real cost of running their own
power and to not have regular outages and damages.
To stay here we would have to fight
the Power Company in the High Courts, spending millions in lawyer fees.
We have already spent in excess of twenty million dollars building the
two new factories on Queens Hwy, buying and setting up the equipment
and training our employees. We are tired of fighting to bring business
and prosperity to this Island. We have decided it will be better to
leave than to give Mr Adams, the attorney, millions more in fees or
to bow down to the gangsters at the Grand Bahama Power Company who in
our opinion really run this island and have its future in its hands.
In all my business life, with operations in the UK, USA and China
we have been successful and grown our companies, but for the first time
I have given up. I've never had to fight to bring jobs anywhere before.
It's so sad and a huge blow to this Island and its future.
In the Bahamas, you the people should
have the power, not the Power Company. You have the most power in the
world. It's called the VOTE. If you think you and your children's future
are important, ask your MP what he or she is going to do about creating
real jobs for your future, especially as the island has just lost many
more good paying jobs we created, due to the Power Company and it's
Lawyer's short sightedness. There certainly are not tourists lining
up to create jobs... and although very welcome, beer sales from spring
break students hardly sustain this downturned economy for long.
We are going to keep a small satellite
window factory on the island as it would not use hardly any electricity
using only saws and hand drills and only in production during the day.
That way the Grand Bahama Power Company will be very happy, Mr Adams
can tell his client he won and the only losers are my company and of
course the people of Grand Bahama who lose more than five hundred jobs.
My heart aches as I am forced to make
this decision.
With great sadness.
Steve Howes
Fenestration And Glass
Freeport, Grand Bahama
About
Fenestration & Glass
Services: Fenestration
and Glass Services Ltd (FGS) is a worldwide supplier of window products
manufactured in Freeport on Queens Highway. Their all-Bahamian worker
force
creates the finest quality economical windows with the highest design
rating,
resulting in excellence performance of the window against storms or
other forms
of impact.FGS windows are constructed with a patented hurricane impact
glass as a standard offering and they offer an upgrade of
thermo-insulated
glass to help homeowners combat lost heating and cooling.
Read subsequent articles in The Tribune and the Freeport News
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