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Denis Pitcher

Member since June 6, 2020

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Denis Pitcher2 months ago Right now there is minimal incentive to invest in batteries and feed back into the grid. There is also minimal incentive to invest in solar capacity beyond what will cover tier 2 and 3 rates.One potential way to incentivize increased investment and capacity is to offer a much better feed in tariff for non-peak or non sunlight hours.This would incentivize investment in over production, batteries, and steady off hours supply if the rate made economic sense, while reducing peak hour fluctuating supply and demand as more people would feed into batteries to benefit from the night rate payback while also leveraging the batteries to smooth their own usage curve an production

Denis Pitcher2 years ago

Denis Pitcher2 years ago Spousal letters represent unnecessary bureaucracy that should either be scrapped entirely or streamlined to minimum requirements.It is my understanding that legally only a marriage certificate is required to prove that someone is a spouse of a Bermudian and be entitled to the rights of one.As noted in a recent article about attempts to improve the processing times, New Processing Timelines For Spousal Letters - Bernews, the extensive requirements include "Application for Residence Form, a police certificate, medical clearance, passport size photos, proof of citizenship, the marriage certificate, and a birth certificate." and can take months to be processed.Why is any of this necessary if legally only a marriage certificate is required? It's simply unnecessary bureaucracy that drives up costs, burdens the immigration department and enables discrimination and harassment of spouses.Can a spousal letter just be changed to an official letter confirming the original marriage certificate and Bermudian status of the spouse?Better yet, can the letter be eliminated entirely?

Denis Pitcher2 years ago Section 9 (statutory council approval) should be eliminated from the work permit process.In order to get a work permit for a medical professional a Section 9 form has to be completed and approved by the appropriate professional body within 10 days of submission.However, the health council now requires an individual to be registered as a professional before the section 9 will be approved. This process is advised to take 4-6 weeks.Only after the Section 9 is submitted will the work permit application be processed. This means months of delays and bureaucracy that could cause the applicant to decline the position, damaging businesses.An individual has to both have a work permit and be registered as a medical processional in order to work. The immigration and health council processes do not need to be intermingled as an individual cannot work without both approvals.Scrap the section 9 requirement from the work permit policy or scrap the requirement that an individual is registered before a section 9 is approved.

Denis Pitcher2 years ago The requirements for submitting a "professional reference" for registering with the Health Council do not match the requirements for an "employment reference" for a work permit.If these don't match, a Section 9 application will be refused to be approved leading to delays in processing a work permit application.Having differing requirements and definitions across departments is a good example of unnecessary red tape as individuals are expected to get multiple copies of a reference from the same person to satisfy each arm of government's requirements.

Denis Pitcher2 years ago The Health Council introduced a new registration process for Pharmasists and it is very burdensomePharmacy-Initial-Registration-Checklist_website-revised.pdf (healthcouncil.bm)Here's a good example: Not only do you have to submit a notarized copy of your degree but you also have to have your university's registrar complete and submit a custom form directly to the health council.Is all of this oversight really needed when Bermuda lacks the resources and this just adds burdensome bureaucracy on business and professionals and drives up the Health Council's staffing requirements or creates delays in bringing in medical professionals?Why can't we keep things simple like they used to be? It used to be good enough for us to rely upon verifying that someone is officially and actively licensed to practice in an approved jurisidction.Why is that no longer good enough? Why do we need extensive control and oversight? How does this possibly help lower health care costs?