By ERWIN ‘AMBO’ DELILAN
ON NOVEMBER 13, I was able to attend a Power 101 press briefing by the National Grid Corporation of the Philippines (NGCP) held at L’Fisher Hotel in Bacolod City.
Through revelation after revelation, media knew that the Henry Sy Jr.-led NGCP is facing a lot of problems on the right-of-way (ROW) all over the country.
The “ROW row”, therefore, remains a woe for the 15 year-old grid corporation whose very mission is to effectively and efficiently transmit power to every Filipino household in Luzon, Visayas and Mindanao through capable power distribution utilities.
But such a mission is being complicated by the ROW row, rendering NGCP “hapless” despite Sy’s undisputed financial capability to provide the best power transmission infrastructure aimed at empowering the country at its best.
In short, Sy’s NGCP is “needing help too” to really cure the “ROW row” that, according to its spokesperson, Atty. Cynthia Alabanza, is the source of the “chronic delay” for many projects they want to implement to upgrade the country’s power transmission services.
Yet, the government, especially the Energy Regulatory Commission (ERC) or the Department of Energy (DOE), seems clueless in helping NGCP to ace the ROW challenges.
Pity the NGCP hence to be tied up with lots of ROW problems, and then blamed as the “culprit” behind in time of power crisis.
It wants to deliver the best but its best is (always) hindered by the “ROW row”, with the government seemingly “helpless” to look for alternatives to solve the mess.
WHAT IS ROW?
In legal parlance, it typically refers to whether the affected parties have a legal right to use the path that traverses a property for a certain project.
In the case of NGCP, building transmission towers is no problem. It can afford. And in terms of the ROW procurement, it’s just peanuts for Sy.
It is the landowners’ resistance to sell their private properties, or not to settle with fair valuation (price) as declared by the court, that remains to be the immense challenge for NCGP.
Yes, expropriation is the key. But it can’t be granted by the court overnight. The judiciary processes are tedious. More so that there is this Supreme Court ruling that NGCP can no longer proceed to pre-construction work and ROW procurement sans the approval of any proposed projects by the ERC.
This clips NGCP’s wings because approval from ERC takes – oh, wow – two to three years per project! Surreal? Nope, it’s real!
Alabanza confessed to the Bacolod media that because of this “ROW row”, 50% of their project timelines were already affected (115 of their transmission project applications at ERC are still pending as of this writing).
INSURGENCY PROBLEM
Another chronic problem NGCP faces is insurgency.
Insurgents and other lawless elements sometimes sabotage NGCP transmission towers, especially in Mindanao, causing power blackout for several days or even a month. Peace and order, therefore, are also one of the biggest considerations in the power transmission business.
Good thing that the police in Negros Occidental vowed to assist NGCP secure their facilities.
This, as Colonel Rainerio de Chavez, Negros Occidental Police Provincial (NOCPPO) director, said energy security is one of their primary concerns as stipulated in a memorandum of agreement (MOA) between NGCP and the Philippine National Police (PNP).
“As a result of this MOA, the higher headquarters of the PNP issued a memo directing lower units to intensify security measures at NGCP facilities.
NO ‘CHOCOLATE BLISS’
But NGCP’s “cry” over the “ROW row” remains loud. It wants to amplify from time to time so the public may know the real state of the power business in the country; that there are these generation, transmission and distribution processes.
And in the transmission side, which NGCP is the team captain, there is this chronic problem.
Too, NGCP, through media, wants to deliver a message to government agencies concerned that their transmission business since it took it over from the government’s Transmission Corporation (TransCo) in 2009 is still no “chocolate bliss” for Filipino power consumers.
In as much as it wants to deliver hybrid transmission services sans irritating interferences, it has first to wage a gigantic battle against the “ROW row”.
It is just sad that government agencies concerned with the energy sector seem to be always batting a “foul ball”./PN
