The National Electrification Administration (NEA) on Monday vowed to address Occidental Mindoro’s power crisis which involves 20-hour daily outages.
“I will be flying in tomorrow to see for myself the situation of the PSI power plant (in San Jose, Occidental Mindoro), if it has([indeed) dependable capacity of six megawatts. If it can deliver and discharge already, I will contract them to discharge the six megawatts,” NEA administrator Antonio Mariano Almeda said in a press conference.
Occidental Mindoro was placed earlier under a state of calamity due to power crisis.
“NEA will be the one to lease the power plant to augment the power [supply and address the shortage,” Almeda said.
Almeda also reported that the Department of Energy already issued a certificate of exemption or EPSA (emergency power supply agreement) which allowed the government to enter into a contract with DMCI for additional power supply.
He said the contract involves the generation of 17 megawatts of power supply.
“DMCI promised to roll out 10 megawatts in a matter of 30 days, (and another) seven megawatts in two months,” Almeda said.
He said he has also instructed the cooperatives in possession of the four units of modular generator sets with two-megawatt capacity each to send it over to Occidental Mindoro Electric Cooperative (Omeco) to provide immediate power supply for hospitals and public schools.
Meanwhile, local officials were considering filing a case of economic sabotage against the power supplier and distributor in the province due to the ongoing power crisis.
Governor Eduardo Gadiano charged that Occidental Mindoro Electric Cooperative (OMECO) and the Occidental Mindoro Consolidated Power Corp. (OMCPC) were not providing the right service as stipulated in their contract.
“If they don’t comply (with the requirements), that means they are not interested and what will happen next, the burden is on us… we are the ones who are suffering like now, we only (have) electricity for four hours. So, I said, maybe we can file a complaint about what they are doing for economic sabotage,” said Gadiano told ABS CBN.
“Our economic, health, education, agricultural, and tourism sectors .. everything here is suffering,” he added.
But on Sunday, residents of Occidental Mindoro experienced up to eight hours of electricity supply.
According to OMECO general manager Celso Garcia, the Oriental Mindoro Electric Cooperative (ORMECO) had an excess supply and was able to release it.
But now, he said, the power supply is back to four hours because ORMECO no longer has an excess supply.
Gadiano said even though Oriental Mindoro has been given an excess supply of electricity, the long brownouts persisted.
He said plans have been drawn to put up more power plants in the province, but so far, nothing has happened.
“Everything is being followed up to the President, we have reached it. Everything has to materialize as planned,” the governor said.
