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Manx Electricity Authority chairman slams MHK's comments
THE chairman of the Manx Electricity Authority has issued a strongly-worded rebuttal of criticisms of the power supplier's performance by Liberal Vannin leader Peter Karran.
Onchan MHK Mr Karran questioned the authority's latest annual accounts — and said it should have an action plan in place to break even and start repaying its massive borrowings.
He said he'd written a letter to the MEA outlining his concerns. The Isle of Man Courier reported its contents on November 19.
In his response MEA chairman Quintin Gill MHK insisted he had not received any correspondence from Mr Karran outlining the criticisms and the only copy he had seen was the one forwarded to him from Isle of Man Newspapers.
Mr Karran had claimed that the Island's power generator was 'lagging significantly behind' those in Guernsey and Jersey but Mr Gill insisted such a comparison was 'unfair'.
'Jersey is one fifth of the size of the Isle of Man with a population of 91,000, is connected to the French grid (circa 80-90 per cent nuclear power) via two sub-sea cables of around 20km each and has a deliberate policy of minimal local generation. Jersey Electric are planning to introduce a third sub-sea cable and possibly remove all local generation entirely.
'Their plans therefore are to move towards nil on-island generation – this is completely contrary to our policy of self-sufficiency. It is therefore completely unfair of you to try to compare the two situations.
'Guernsey is one seventh of the size of the Isle of Man with a population of 66,000 and has a single sub-sea cable of 35km length providing half of its power needs from French nuclear sources.'
He pointed out a rigorous benchmarking analysis, as suggested by Mr Karran, should not only compare like with like but also that the comparison should be over the same time period and uses the correct figures.
'The authority is an active participant in the EU Small Islands Group which is presently undertaking a benchmarking process across all members. This will deliver accurate data that will provide our management with insights into any areas of relative under-performance,' he added.
Mr Gill insisted the level of remuneration for senior executives was in line with salaries paid within government but added: 'It is interesting to note that salaries paid to senior officials in Jersey Electric — your own (albeit flawed) chosen benchmark — are nearly twice those paid at MEA.'
But the MEA chairman was particularly damning about a suggestion from Mr Karran that 'most of the senior executives were in post during the run up to the financial disaster' of the loans crisis. 'Don't they bear any responsibility for the costs having run totally out of control?' asked the Onchan MHK.
Mr Gill described this as 'an unworthy attempt to smear hard-working MEA staff' and invited Mr Karran to apologise to 'those individuals who will justifiably be aggrieved at your allegations – allegations which they cannot respond to themselves.'
He concluded that while he was 'disappointed' at the manner in which Mr Karran chose to make 'unsubstantiated and, in some cases, personal allegations', he repeated his offer to meet with him to explain the issues.
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Saturday 04 February 2012
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