Bahamas Electricity Corporation (BEC) Executive Chairman Leslie Miller said yesterday the corporation's accounts receivable is $185 million.
Miller told The Guardian several weeks ago that money owed to BEC was in excess of $130 million, with about 75 percent of that owed by residential customers.
"We are asking our customers to assist us by trying to pay," he said at a press conference.
"We find ourselves in a precarious situation where we need to generate about $40 million this month to enable us to defray our cost for our fuel, because right now we are at our limit with our fuel supplier, which is $120 million.
"Our accounts receivable right now is $185 million, with the government owing us in excess of $30 million, so we need everyone to please, try to do the best you can in paying BEC and getting your bill up to date, including myself as chairman and everybody else in this country," he said.
"We are all in this boat together by the way. No one is different from [anybody] else. You have some of the major hotels in the country owing us millions of dollars.
"I'm talking about in excess of $15 million in some cases and they are telling you that the capacity isn't there for them to generate the funds at his time -- 'you have to work with us if not we have to lay off some Bahamians'."
The Nassau Guardian revealed recently that Miller and his family-owned businesses owed BEC more than $200,000.
The day after the story was published, Miller's family made a $100,000 payment on the bill.
There is no indication whether the remainder of the bill was paid or when it will be.
Outage
At the press conference, Miller also said the corporation is working to prevent any further service disruptions from occurring in the country.
On Monday, thousands of BEC customers in New Providence were without electricity for most of the day.
"[We] are far removed from the past when customers would have experienced rolling black-outs and load shedding in the hot summer months," Miller said.
He added that Monday's outage was not the result of an issue with BEC being unable to meet the demand for electricity, but rather its ability to transmit and distribute that electricity.
The latest blackout came less than a month after an island-wide outage.
Miller said the investigation into that outage was completed by PowerSecure, a leading provider of utility and energy technologies, and will be made available to Cabinet soon. He declined to share the results.
Miller also took issue with complaints made against the government's use of the company to lead the investigation into the July 3 outage.
"You [are] raising hell because we brought someone here to look at the system?" he asked.
"But the lights went out. If your lights went out for a whole day and people were suffering, would it not be prudent to bring some people in to take a look at the system?"

Click here to read more at The Nassau Guardian