BY MATÈ ESPINA
THESE past weeks, we’ve experienced several power outages almost on a daily basis. Sometimes it goes off for several minutes, at times an hour or so.
Then you have the scheduled Sundays’ “maintenance” by the National Grid Power Corporation which can last for 12 hours such as tomorrow when my area will be covered from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. This is the nth time of supposed maintenance which requires us to plan where to go to escape the summer heat, and how to preserve consumables that need refrigeration.
While this is under power utility concerns, water is affected as well as this has been the excuse of Prime Water that took over the Bacolod City Water District. No power, no water. Of course that is a different issue altogether because even with continuous power, the new water company has been blamed for blacking water to no water at all in some areas despite the promised improvement after their takeover.
Yesterday, in a radio interview over Aksyon Radyo Bacolod, the general manager of the Central Negros Electric Cooperative (Ceneco), Atty. Danny Pondevilla said they really have no control over NGCP’s maintenance operations.
Pondevilla said they are urging all power coops and local government units in Negros Island to ask NGCP to change their scheduled maintenance from 3 a.m. to 11 a.m. instead of the 6-to-6 in order not to inconvenience the power consumers.
Pondevilla who also manages the Northern Negros Electric Cooperative (Noneco) said that they have been using this schedule when they needed to do maintenance operations in Noneco’s area. “If we can have our employees work on those times, then NGCP must also require their employees to do that.”
I do not really know what kind of maintenance work NGCP needs to do which they cannot cover in 12 hours of operation because we have been experiencing scheduled blackouts for some time already in this pandemic times.
On the other hand, Ceneco said the intermittent power outages are allegedly due to trees touching their lines during windy times. I agree to his observation because most often, when there is weather disturbance, power goes off. But it is frustrating that even a little rain have been causing brownouts that can affect electronic appliances.
Last year, I had to replace a valve in my airconditioning unit after it got busted and my supplier said, this can very well be because of the sporadic power outage, not to mention the fluctuations which can do more damage.
Pondevilla said they are waiting for the accomplishment report from the contracted supplier in-charge of tree-clearing versus their monitoring before Ceneco will cough up payment. He said it is different in Noneco as maintenance like tree-clearing are implemented in-house.
What is good news though is that Ceneco promised a P1/KWh price reduction starting this June which has been approved in principle by the new set of Board of Directors.
In a surprise move last week, the BOD which included the three new ones recently elected, ousted President Dwight Carbon and replaced him with Director Jojit Yap, the first female to hold that post.
Jojit is closely identified with the camp of Bacolod Mayor Bing Leonardia. But I am for women power and I would like to see Jojit succeed in leading this power coop that has been besieged by politics and power struggles for decades now.
A little birdie told me however that Dwight (admittedly he was not doing badly as well) was booted out allegedly because a post from a family member that showcased how progressive Iloilo City is, compared to Bacolod, irked someone from the top. Hmmmm, truth hurts, I guess.
Meanwhile, Pondevilla admitted that talks of franchising off the Ceneco and other coops in the island has been resurrected. There is a franchise application pending in Congress by the Gamboa Hermanos Farmworkers Multipurpose Cooperative to construct, install, establish, operate, own, manage and maintain distribution systems for the conveyance of electric power to the end-users in the Island of Negros.
It was sponsored by Bacolod Rep. Greg Gasataya which became an election issue against him in the past.
This, Pondevilla said will never happen if the coops are doing its best to serve their consumers. He said the key to stop privatization or franchising power coops lies on the employees and he has been hammering this upon them.
“Employees always focus on demands for higher pay but I have yet to see service improvement from them,” he said and if service is good, “I don’t think the consumers will allow the coops to be traded off if they are happy with it.”
Of course even with that assurance, nothing is impossible as we have seen with the scheming turnover of Baciwa management to Villar’s water company at the height of the pandemic last year.
What is interesting to see is what newly-elected Ceneco Director, Fr. Ernie Larida will do now that he is part of management. Larida used to sit in the opposite fence as an outspoken member of the consumer rights group. Now that he is within the system, can he influence major changes such us preference for renewable energy which is strongly supported by the Church? Let’s wait and see./PN
