Business Mirror
Published on Tuesday, 16 April 2013 19:18 Written by Jonathan L. Mayuga / Reporter
THE current power crisis in Mindanao may cost 50,000 people their jobs, leaders of the Pambansang Lakas ng Kilusang Mamamalakaya ng Pilipinas (Pamalakaya) and Anakpawis party-list said on Tuesday.
Pamalakaya said unless the problem is acted upon by the Aquino administration, those who stand to be affected by the Mindanao power crisis are currently employed in several canning factories and companies that operate deep-sea fishing vessels in General Santos City, Zamboanga Peninsula and South Cotabato. They may end up losing their jobs or forced to accept underpaid jobs when companies begin to sacrifice work hours to cut costs as a result of the power crisis.
Fernando Hicap, Pamalakaya chairman, expressed alarm over the current seven-hour to eight-hour power interruption being experienced in Mindanao.
He said if this will continue, it will force operators of canning factories and deep-sea fishing to downsize labor, reduce fishing and canning hours, and cut minimum wages possibly by half because of the irreparable damage caused by the daily brownouts across the island.
“Mr. Aquino should not ignore this economic holocaust now unfolding all over Mindanao and being witness with outrage by the Filipino public. Imagine the impact of power crisis to 50,000 fishermen and fishport workers in Zamboanga Peninsula, General Santos City and the entire Soccsksargen area. If he continues to play dumb or offers dumb solutions to the power crisis, then he better face the political costs of his arrogance and negligence and subservience to power monopoly interests,” Hicap said.
Pamalakaya and its ally organization, Anakpawis, warned that aside from the power outages, other issues complicating the operations of Filipino-owned canneries and deep-sea fishing in Mindanao are the sky-high cost of petroleum products and the 12-percent expanded value-added tax.
At the height of oil price increases in 2009 and 2010, some commercial fishing operators were forced to shut down operations or reduce labor force by one-third up to one-half, Pamalakaya and Anakpawis recalled.
Officials of Pamalakaya and Anakpawis asked fish cannery and deep-sea fishing operators not to sacrifice jobs and wages. Instead, Hicap and Pamalakaya Vice Chairman Salvador France called on Filipino businessmen and fish workers both affected by the power crisis in Mindanao should confront President Aquino and the power utility firms who they say exploit the current power situation in Mindanao for profit.
According to Hicap, the power outages in Mindanao had caused Filipino businessmen to lose as much as P300 million in unrealized sales and higher costs which started this summer.
The biggest losers are the seven canning factories and the deep-sea fishing vessel operators in General Santos City and neighboring South Cotabato province, according to Rey Billena, vice president of the General Santos Chamber of Commerce and Industry.
Billena was quoted in news report as arguing that the worsening power crisis had forced owners of the factories and vessels to use their own diesel-fed generators, which, he added, are more expensive, and continue paying workers even if the factories were not operating.
He said fish canning and deep-sea fishing operators are compelled to shoulder an additional P2 million in operating costs per day to cover for the fuel and the man-hours, he said. One cannery even lost between P200,000 and P300,000 to pay workers who did not work on certain days because there was no electricity, Billena asserted that the losses amounted to a total of P8 million to P10 million per cannery per month. As of Monday, the Mindanao grid posted a power supply deficit of 207 megawatts. source
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