Consumer advocates will ask government to undertake a hardline stance in dealing with the bombings of power transmission towers and right-of-way issues which are threatening the energy security of the Mindanao Grid.
Bombed NGCP tower by Alvin Elchico, ABS-CBN News
Rep. Reynaldo V. Umali, chairman of the House Committee on Energy has invited the Mindanao Coalition of Power Consumers to share its views and comments on the Inter-Agency Action Plans to resolve the bombings and right-of-way (ROW) of transmission facilities in Mindanao on Wednesday, February 17, 2016 during a consultative meeting to be held at the Mindanao University of Science and Technology (MUST) in Cagayan de Oro starting 9AM.
“We received the attached invitation from the House Committee on Energy to attend a consultative meeting for the purpose of sharing our views on the bombings and ROW problems of the Mindanao Grid,” said Engr. David A. Tauli, MCPC president. “I met with National Grid Corporation of the Philippines (NGCP) people to discuss the problems, and have the following recommendations and comments which we shall submit to the committee during the hearing.”
MCPC Pres. David A. Tauli stresses a point during the March 6, 2014 consultation meeting with the House Energy Committee held at MUST (photo by Mike Baños, NPN)
Among the tough measures recommended by the consumer advocates are the passage of a national law prohibiting the planting of trees and construction of structures within the Line Rights-of-Way of any existing electric power transmission and distribution lines, and direct the Philippine Army to enforce such law in the provinces of Lanao del Sur and Lanao del Norte and in other provinces where the Philippine National Police (PNP) has been unable to enforce the rule of law.
As a corollary to the first measure, the MCPC also recommends assigning the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) the responsibility for the security of the transmission lines and apprehending the perpetrators of the bombings of transmission towers.
In addition, the group urged the President and the Commission on Elections (Comelec) to direct the Engineering Battalions of the Philippine Army to cut down all trees within the line rights-of-way of the transmission lines in the provinces where these are found.
Trees deliberately planted (NGCP photo)
“The reason for this third recommendation is that the trees that have been planted within the line ROW of the transmission lines in these provinces pose a continuing threat to the reliable operations of the Mindanao Grid, and the outage of a single transmission lines due to these trees is likely to result in Mindanao-wide blackouts because some of the transmission lines in these places have been rendered non-operational by bombings,” Tauli explained. “Considering that we are now in the campaign period for the national elections, blackouts in Mindanao threaten to disrupt the election process and constitute a threat to national security.”
MCPC Corp. Sec. Clint Django Pacana said the NGCP should be commended for the efforts that their people have been carrying out to address the problems.
“And the National Power Corporation (Napocor, now the Power Sector Assets & Liabilities Management Corporation or PSALM) in Mindanao should be censured for not carrying out any activity towards solving the problem despite the fact that NPC-Mindanao is losing millions of pesos of revenues for each day that the Agus 1 and Agus 2 hydroelectric power plants cannot deliver their generation to power consumers because out the outage of all the transmission lines connecting the hydro plants to the grid.”
House Energy Committee Member Rep. Ed Masongsong meets stalwarts of the Mindanao Coalition of Power Consumers shortly before the public hearing on IMEM held March 6 in Cagayan de Oro City (photo by Mike Baños, NPN)
During a public hearing held March 6, 2014 by the same committee, the MCPC led a campaign for the suspension of the Interim Mindanao Electricity Market (IMEM) following perceived design and operational deficiencies which resulted in the indefinite suspension of the IMEM by the Department of Energy (DOE) upon the recommendation of the committee.
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