Friday, 30 March, 2012 Written by Manila Standard Today
MINDANAO’S leaders on Friday used the celebration of today’s Earth Hour to mock the administration’s inaction on their island’s acute power shortage, saying they had been turning out the lights not just for one ceremonial hour every year but for four to eight hours every day for the past two years.
“We’ve observed Earth Hour every day for the past two years,” Agham Rep. Angelo Palmones said.
“We now call it the Eight Hours. It is our way of life in Mindanao.”
Former senator Juan Miguel Zubiri took the same tack.
“As the world celebrates Earth Hour today to remind us to lessen our dependence on fossil fuels, we in Mindanao celebrate Earth Hour every day to the tune of four-hour brownouts every time,” said Zubiri, who first raised the alarm over the rolling blackouts gripping the island provinces daily.
Zubiri warned of massive job losses by April because of the “catastrophic” blackouts and urged the government to speed the development of renewable energy projects now pending with the Energy Department.
The former senator, who comes from Bukidnon, also said the government should look beyond building more coal-fired plants to solve the shortage.
“Building fossil-fueled power plants would defeat the very essence of having a cleaner world to reverse the impact of global warming,” Zubiri said.
The remarks from Mindanao’s leaders came a day after Senator Sergio Osmeña III said Mindanao had been “spoiled” by government subsidies over the last decade, and that the residents there would have to pay the price through higher power rates.
Osmeña also endorsed the construction of coal-fired plants and castigated the environmentalist group Greenpeace for opposing the projects.
But Zubiri said there were several requests for renewable energy projects in Mindanao pending with the Energy Department, including mini-hydro facilities in Surigao del Sur, Cotabato, Bukidnon and Davao.
The goethermal projects in Davao and parts of Region 9 and the wind projects for Surigao del Norte and Davao Oriental were also awaiting the Energy Department’s approval, Zubiri said.
He said the power that could be generated from those projects would be more than enough to supply the estimated deficit of 285 megawatts in Mindanao in 2014.
“The renewable energy law is in place. We appeal to government to promote and implement it,” Zubiri said.
Citing National Grid Corp. data, Zubiri said that, as of March 29, Mindanao had a power supply deficit of 187 megawatts or roughly 15 percent of peak system demand.
Zubiri said the power-intensive industries hurt by the recurring outages included food processing and canning; rice, corn and coconut milling; construction; metal die casting; and the manufacture of steel, chemicals, cement and paper.
The shopping malls and other commercial buildings that rely heavily on ventilation and cooling had also been hurt, he said.
“Agricultural plantations and fishing operations that depend on mechanization and cold-storage had likewise been dampened,” Zubiri said.
Even the petroleum and water industries had been hurt since they depended on electricity to drive their pumps.
On Friday, Maguindanao Rep. Simeon Datumanong said it was grossly unfair of Osmeña to blame the people of Mindanao for the problem, saying they were victims of government neglect.
“I do not know the basis of Senator Osmeña’s observation, but how can you blame Mindanaoans for the power problems that they cannot do anything to prevent?”
“Clearly the people of Mindanao were victims of Imperial Manila and the national legislators and policymakers’ myopic view and anti-people and anti-consumer mindset” that favored the big players in the energy industry, Datumanong said.
House Deputy Minority Leader and Zambales Rep. Milagros Magsaysay, a member of the House committee on energy, said Osmeña was clearly speaking out of turn, and out of his depth.
“I think that he is not the right person to make such comments,” Magsaysay said.
“The people of Mindanao should not be blamed for the scarcity of the power supply. It is the government’s obligation to ensure not only the people of Mindanao but of the whole country that they will have a stable power supply.”
Osmeña, the chairman of the Senate energy committee, was mired in a serious case of conflict of interest, Datumanong said, noting that the senator was married to a member of the Lopez clan, which had vast interests n the energy industry.
The Lopez family still owns 6 percent of Manila Electric Co., which is the distribution monopoly of Metro Manila and which supplies 70 percent of Luzon’s power requirements.
The Lopezes also acquired the Apo Geothermal Plant in Davao after Osmeña and his brother John helped craft the Electric Power Industry Reform Act years ago, and then raised electricity prices by 70 percent.
“Now who is spoiled or abused? Who is abusing the people of Mindanao? Datumanong said.
Palmones also denounced Osmeña’s statement blaming Mindanao for the industry being in the intensive care unit.
“Inside an ICU, there is no blaming but only the exchange of ideas and expertise,” Palmones said.
“Those who can’t help better stay away.” With Maricel Cruz
(Published in the Manila Standard Today newspaper on /2012/March/31)
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