ILOILO City – Residents and business establishments here may have to wait for three more years before their wish for a better power distribution service comes true.
Sangguniang Panlalawigan (SP) members grilled MORE Electric and Power Corp. (MORE Power) yesterday over the long power interruptions inconveniencing the city.
“How could you make life more comfortable sa mga Ilonggos kon frequent ang brownouts,” Vice Mayor Jeffrey Ganzon, the SP presiding officer, pointedly said.
According to MORE Power president and chief executive officer Roel Castro, it may take around three more years before the city finally gets to see “good improvement” in the power distribution service.
The grilling of MORE Power was an “investigation in aid of legislation” of the SP committee on public utilities chaired by Councilor Romel Duron. The series of long brownouts triggered it.
Councilor Eduardo Peñaredondo did not hide his dismay.
“You cannot supply the ordinary, usual (power) consumption we have because you have not put up any substations,” he said.
The most senior SP member said MORE should have a development plan.
“We are interested on how much your company is going to invest in Iloilo City. When we say invest there’s a program of expenditures for the first year, second year, third year, and fourth year (that can meet) the development(s) in the city,” said Peñaredondo.
He stressed the importance of Iloilo City having sufficient and reliable power service. This is one of the things investors check, he said.
For his part, Councilor Ely Estante said MORE Power should have erected its own power distribution facilities instead of just using those of the previous power distributor, Panay Electric Co. (PECO) which MORE Power itself considered defective, ill-maintained and outdated.
“Which is more beneficial, expropriate PECO’s facilities or get new ones? If you have your own new facilities, there is low maintenance. If you utilize the facilities of PECO used 50 years ago daku ang maintenance,” said Estante.
Castro said MORE Power’s franchise law, Republic Act 11212, allows expropriation to ensure continuity of electric service.
The “mode of complying with that is to take over (the facilities) then rehabilitate because the contemplation of the law has always been that,” he said.
“But there’s a commitment we made. We committed P1.9 billion to rehabilitate and upgrade,” said Castro.
Councilor Candice Tupas urged MORE Power to manage the brownouts in such a way that these won’t cause so much inconvenience.
“I understand kon nga-a kinahanglan ang 13-hour brownout pero medyo masakit gid sa buot ta…I hope (this won’t be) often kay mabudlay gid, especially now that we are starting online schooling for our children. It’s very difficult for me and to many more consumers,” said Tupas.
Castro said, “To rehabilitate and to make the system reliable is not an overnight thing…It will take time…at least in the next three years.”
An executive of PECO attended the committee investigation. Mikel Afzelius said power interruptions such as the recent 13-hour brownout in Mandurriao district “cannot be taken in isolation.”
“So far in the very brief period that MORE Power has been operating — based on their declared outages alone, and we’re not even talking about undeclared ones – there have been a total of 326 hours Iloilo City was plunged into darkness. We have to let that sink in — 326 hours of suffering for our people,” said Afzelius.
Such hours of brownouts, he said, were “close to double the outage durations of PECO in the same period last year.”
“The 13-hour power outage on June 20 in Mandurriao, based on information provided by MORE Power itself, was something that could have been fixed in 30 minutes, at most an hour,” Afzelius added.
In other words, he said, around 10,000 households could have been spared “from those 13 hours of torture having no electricity.”
MORE Power secured a franchise from Congress to be the sole power distributor in Iloilo City. The franchise law was signed by President Rodrigo Duterte on Feb. 14, 2019.
PECO, the city’s power distributor for over 95 years, failed to secure a franchise extension from Congress. Its franchise ended on Jan. 19, 2019./PN
