FREEPORT, Grand Bahama — A spokesperson for the Grand Bahama Power Company (GBPC) said yesterday it is investigating the matter surrounding its purchase of a generator from former Senate president and National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA) coordinator Kay Forbes-Smith, The Nassau Guardian reported on Tuesday, February 15.
Forbes-Smith is also former managing director of the Disaster Reconstruction Authority (DRA), but information in the public domain purports to show she sold the power company the generator two weeks before her DRA appointment, but while she was Senate president and involved with NEMA in the wake of Hurricane Dorian in 2019.
The company declined to provide additional details on the “investigation” or when it was first approached about purchasing the generator.
Questions regarding Forbes-Smith’s sale of the generator to the power company were raised after emails, an invoice and other purported documents were leaked via social media last week.
Two of the emails appear to show correspondence between two executives at GBPC regarding the purchase of the generator.
In the first email, which is dated November 19, 2019, a GBPC executive wrote that he had decided that the power company will purchase the generator for $16,000 from Forbes-Smith.
“You can use it for a substation project or…as a back up for one of the small solar [and] storage projects in the east,” he wrote.
“Please work through procurement to make the transaction happen and have it removed and put into our possession.”
In the second email, another executive appeared to forward the email to another GBPC employee to ask that they create requisition for $16,000 for Forbes-Smith. See complete Nassau Guardian article at https://thenassauguardian.com/power-company-says-its-probing-its-purchase-of-generator-from-forbes-smith/
