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The Bahamas is facing a growing public crisis over persistent, widespread power disruptions across New Providence and multiple Family Islands, prompting Prime Minister Philip Davis to deliver a nationally televised address Wednesday night to address ongoing reliability failures at the country’s sole electricity provider, Bahamas Power and Light (BPL).

The announcement comes at the end of another weekend of rolling blackouts, capping a brutal summer that has seen BPL grapple with repeated service failures, soaring public anger, and internal labor unrest that has further strained grid operations.

No community has been hit harder than Grand Cay, where residents have endured near-constant power loss for nearly two weeks. A seven-day outage last week was only temporarily resolved when partial service was restored early Tuesday, only for the island to fall back into full blackout Thursday night. As of Tuesday, power had not been restored, forcing most households to rely on costly gasoline-powered generators to keep refrigerators, medical equipment and other essential devices running.

Local residents describe the crisis as the worst electrical failure they have ever experienced, with the added financial burden of constant generator use pushing household budgets to the breaking point. One resident told local outlet The Tribune that the average household spends around $40 per day on gasoline, with larger properties paying far more. Barry, a long-time Grand Cay resident who powers three properties — his own home, a rental unit, and his stepmother’s residence — told reporters he spends roughly $150 daily on fuel alone. He called the ongoing situation an absolute nightmare.

The outages are not just disrupting daily life: they are also derailing back-to-school preparations for local families and hurting the island’s critical tourism sector. Barry noted that he recently lost a tourist booking after the prospective visitors learned of the ongoing power problems. “We have so many tourists that love this place, but you can’t blame them because they want to be comfortable. The power situation has put us in a chokehold,” he said.

BPL has attributed Grand Cay’s prolonged outage to a catastrophic mechanical failure of the island’s primary existing generator. The company had planned to bring a replacement generator online to restore full service, but announced over the weekend that the replacement unit requires additional repairs and extensive safety testing before it can be deployed, leaving residents in limbo with no clear timeline for full restoration.

Grand Cay is far from the only affected community in Abaco. Nearby Guana Cay has also experienced extended outages, which BPL traced to two separate cable faults, including a damaged subsea cable that serves the southern end of the island. As of Tuesday, BPL announced that repairs to the subsea cable have been completed, but work on an underground cable fault in North Guana Cay remained ongoing. BPL also reported unplanned outages in Dundas Town Tuesday evening, with no official cause identified as of press time.

Widespread outages were also reported across multiple communities in New Providence over the past weekend. BPL noted that some outages were pre-planned to allow for critical system upgrades in areas including Cowpen Road, Faith Gardens, Golden Gates and Carmichael Road. Other unplanned disruptions were blamed on tripped feeders, pre-scheduled tree-trimming work, and proactive outages designed to prevent dangerous system overloads during peak summer demand.

The ongoing reliability crisis has unfolded against a backdrop of deep internal turmoil at BPL, sparked by a new overtime policy implemented by the Davis administration. The controversy began last week when The Tribune exclusively reported that three senior employees in BPL’s fuel and performance department collected a combined total of more than $600,000 in overtime pay between May 2025 and April 2026. The administration currently spends roughly $20 million per year on employee overtime for BPL, a figure senior officials have called “unacceptable” and financially unsustainable for the public utility.

In response to the excessive overtime payouts, the administration introduced new rules that cap scheduled overtime, require formal management review for employees who repeatedly hit the overtime cap, and mandate senior leadership approval for any worker whose overtime exceeds a set percentage of their base annual salary. The Bahamas Electrical Workers Union has opposed the new policy, arguing it violates the terms of its existing collective bargaining agreement with the company. The union has already filed a formal trade dispute over the change and has instructed all members to work strictly to rule, meaning employees only work their standard scheduled hours with no voluntary overtime until the dispute is resolved.

A growing wave of anxiety has swept through the close-knit community of Eleuthera as the search enters its seventh day for Katrina Kelly, a local entrepreneur and hospitality professional who vanished under suspicious circumstances last Tuesday night. Kelly, who serves as assistant manager at the popular Pink Sands hotel and runs a small independent car rental business, left her Bluff neighborhood home in the company of three unknown men, and no one has heard from her since.

Her 11-year-old daughter, the last person to see Kelly, gave a detailed account of the night of her disappearance to local outlet The Tribune, speaking with the full consent of her family. The child recalled that between 9 and 10 p.m., Kelly told her she was stepping out to drop off friends and collect food for the family. When the girl looked out moments later, she saw three unidentified men exit a vehicle, speak briefly with her mother, before Kelly got into the car with the group and drove away. The 11-year-old told reporters she did not recognize any of the three men, and Kelly did not share any details about who the visitors were or when she planned to return.

For Kelly’s family, this disappearance carries a devastating extra layer of grief: just 12 months prior, Kelly’s 23-year-old brother Ashantio Clevorn Johnson, a trainee officer with the Bahamas Department of Correctional Services, was fatally stabbed in an incident at the Blu Ice Restaurant and Bar. What would have been Johnson’s birthday fell just one day after Kelly vanished, adding a grim timing to the family’s ongoing nightmare.

Relatives initially did not sound the alarm immediately after Kelly went missing, as they explained she had a pattern of stepping away from daily life to grieve privately around the anniversary of her brother’s death and birthday. But in previous instances, she always informed family members of how long she would be gone and checked in to confirm she was safe. This time, there has been complete silence.

Loretta Cash-Pierre, Kelly’s cousin, lifelong best friend and godsister, told reporters that a key detail has deepened the family’s suspicion of foul play: a white Nissan Cube connected to Kelly’s car rental business is also missing. Pierre explained that the vehicle was actually Kelly’s personal car, which she only rented to people she knew and trusted. According to Pierre’s account, the three men who arrived at Kelly’s home on Tuesday night had rented the car and were returning it, which is why Kelly agreed to meet them. Pierre has already turned over all information she has about the renters to investigating officers, and also handed over Kelly’s personal electronic devices to help with the search.

Red flags began to pile up quickly: by Wednesday, Kelly failed to pick up her mother from the airport after her parent returned from a trip to the United States, a responsibility she had confirmed she would handle. By Thursday, Pierre still had not received a reply to a message she sent Kelly the night of her disappearance, and other family members – including Kelly’s 18-year-old daughter – began reaching out to report they had also not heard from the missing woman.

Weeks before her disappearance, Pierre added, Kelly posted a public social media status referencing ongoing conflict with clients who had refused to pay for their car rentals. It is unclear if that conflict is connected to her disappearance, but the detail has added to the family’s concerns.

The tragedy has left Kelly’s already grieving parents shattered, Pierre said. Just one year after losing their son, the couple now faces the nightmare of having their daughter missing, and Kelly’s father has been particularly overwhelmed by the stress of the situation. Kelly’s mother, too, has been unable to handle inquiries about the search, and asked Pierre to speak on the family’s behalf. Even her 11-year-old daughter has spoken about the relentless stress of the past week, noting that while her mother had stayed away before, she always checked in with loved ones.

Local law enforcement released an official missing person poster for Kelly on Friday, two days after she was last seen, and Pierre said investigators have been cooperative and responsive to the family’s tips. Despite the growing fears and the suspicious circumstances surrounding her disappearance, Kelly’s relatives have not given up hope, and are clinging to the belief that she will be found alive and unharmed. Speaking to reporters, Pierre emphasized that violent disappearances of this kind are deeply out of character for the small, tight-knit island community. “Eleuthera is supposed to be a safe place where you let your hair down. These kind of things don’t happen in Eleuthera,” she said.