Repeal- Epira call follows outage in Mindanao

Manila Standard Today

By Maricel Cruz | Mar. 02, 2014 at 12:01am

House Speaker Feliciano Belmonte Jr. and several other lawmakers vowed to make the review of the Electric Power Industry Reform Act their priority agenda while others called for an outright repeal of the law after Mindanao last Thursday was plunged into darkness.

Belmonte said he has instructed the House committee on energy, chaired by Oriental Mindoro Rep. Reynaldo Umali, to attend to measures filed seeking to revisit the Epira law, which has been blamed for the high cost of electricity in the country.

“Of course, we will look into it,” Belmonte said in light of the recurring brownouts that hit Mindanao since last week.

Belmonte’s statement was echoed by House Deputy Majority Leader Sherwin Tugna, stressing that it is about time for the Congress to review the Epira Law in order to get into the bottom of the power problem.

“There should be more state intervention in the issue of blackouts in Mindanao. Power plant owners does not want to operate their plants because of high cost of materials to operate their plants. As a result, there is no source of power,” Tugna said in a separate interview with the Manila Standard.

Distribution facilities like cooperatives do not have have anything to distribute to the end consumers, and so the problem persists, he said.

Opposition Rep. Jonathan dela Cruz of Abakada party-list, member of the House Independent Minority Bloc headed by Leyte Rep. Ferdinand Martin Romualdez, lamented the Aquino’s administration’s inability to address the recurring power problem in MIndanao, as well as provide a long term solution to it.

“It is really sad that nothing significant has been done about the power situation in Mindanao. Four years after P-Noy (President Benigno Aquino III) promised to do something, and yet a promise remains a promise,” Dela Cruz said.

He also chided the Aquino government for empowering the private sector in handling the power problem.

“It appears the Aquino administration has left everything to the tender mercies of the private sector, principally Aboitiz, which is symptomatic of a skewed way of serving the greater good,” Dela Cruz lamented, adding that the government should be proactive and should not leave such ‘basic’ to private hands and let the public from the regulatory capture.

Rep. Walden Bello for his part said Epira did not pass the test of satisfying the consumers’ interest. “At the heart of this is power, greed and injustice,” Bello told a weekly forum at Annabel’s Restaurant in Quezon City.

“The culprit in the high cost of elecricity is the monopoly because of Epira,’ Bello said.

The Department of Energy was initially clueless as to the real cause of the brownouts in Mindanao that plagued the region last week. But it suspected the cause of the region-wide was equipment failure at a high-voltage switchyard that utility officials said is about 26 years old.

DOE Secretary Petilla also admitted that Mindanao will continue to suffer two- to three-hour blackouts even though the Agus-Pulangi plants are back online.

Petilla said Steag State Power Inc. ‘s 210 megawatt coal-fired power plant remains offline after the system-wide blackout experienced at 3:53 am Thursday morning. With Rio Araja   source