Tuesday, May 7, 2013
THERE is something distressing in Energy Secretary Jericho Petilla’s interview over ANC when he said that government will force a shutdown on businesses on Election Day, May 13, and that violators will be sanctioned.
If an energy secretary thinks that way, then Mindanao is indeed in big trouble.
It’s not as if elections come from out of the blues. It happens like clockwork every May three years apart. To be more precise, National and local elections are held every second Monday of May every third year starting 1992. Now, as elections are looming ahead, an energy secretary, the guy who is in charge of keeping track of energy resources and planning for future demands, will be sanctioning businesses who will operate on Election Day, because the power crisis, which has been there since the time of President Fidel V. Ramos, has been making Mindanao suffer regular blackouts.
A loud round of applause for Petilla! Yey! Just in case you don’t get it, that is a sarcastic cheer.
We can’t quite put our finger on it, but we know, this is not how an energy department should respond to a situation that comes around like clockwork every three years. Petilla may say he’s not been there three years ago, that is precisely why there is a department that precedes him. A government agency does not prepare for eventualities only after a new secretary takes over. Rather, it has a set of contingency measures for events that always happen – elections and Mindanao power crisis among them. That DOE sat on the problem and did not even think to prepare for May 13 in Mindanao gives us in Mindanao an idea how myopic the Malacañang-centered government is.
Sanction businesses that violate the forced shutdown, Secretary? How about the people sanctioning you for not doing your job long before May 2013, sir? For being inept, the most that you deserve is to plead to businesses to reduce their power consumption on May 13 and not threaten them with sanctions in you undeserved high-handed manner. source
No comments:
Post a Comment