Bahamas Electricity Corporation (BEC) Executive Chairman Leslie Miller said that closed circuit television (CCTV) cameras will be installed at all of the corporation's locations in New Providence and the Family Islands in an effort to prevent copper and fuel thefts.

Miller said this exercise will cost over $200,000. "We also, as mandated, put proper fencing around our sites in the Family Islands," he told The Guardian.

"New Providence has good barriers now. But we are putting up a new electronic surveillance system around the entire barrier.

"It's going to be a costly exercise...[but] it needs to be done."

Miller said it will cost between $100,000 and $125,000 to install CCTV cameras at the Clifton Pier Power Plant, under $100,000 at the Baillou Hills Power Plant and $50,000 for the various Family Island sites.

He said installation of the cameras and additional security measures should be done within three to four months. "It's just a matter of getting the funding," he said.

"We have to do it because our assets on the Family Islands more than cover the amount of money we have to spend on surveillance."

BEC was forced to shut down one of its main engines in May after at least 100 feet of power cables and the maintenance and service lines to that engine were severed at BEC's Clifton Pier plant, according to Miller.

He believes it was an act of sabotage. Miller told The Guardian last week that, "We are going to put cameras where we have those engines to see what happened before, if it's an inside job by any employee, so that the cameras would pick up and see exactly who was responsible for it."

Last December, there was a 70,000-gallon fuel spill at a BEC storage facility in Rock Sound, Eleuthera. Miller said it exposed the long-running theft of fuel from the facility.

He said officials suspect that an unknown thief was siphoning thousands of gallons of fuel from the storage facility for some time.

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