Reforms should lead to genuine power co-ops

We thank Walden Bello, Akbayan party-list representative, for sharing his valuable views during the House energy committee hearings on President Aquino’s request for authority to establish new generating facilities to address the projected power crisis come the summer months of 2015 (“The power problem: a Shell-driven crisis,” Inquirer.net, 11/22/14).

In Mindanao, we have had our share of power crisis and this has been a part of our daily lives, to the consternation of the hapless consumers who look up to their power distributors for solutions. Perhaps, the failure of the Mindanao power distributors is something the House energy committee can consider in weighing the need to amend the Electric Power Industry Reform Act (Epira).

Whenever consumers ask the management of electric cooperatives or the private distributors why there is a power outage, all they get for a reply is: Either the Agus-Pulangi hydropower complex is unable to supply the needed power supply or the National Grid Corp. of the Philippines cannot provide the required ancillary services.

We in the Mindanao cooperative movement simply view our rotating power outages as an intentional failure of the government in enforcing the Epira provisions that mandate the Department of Energy and all the distribution utilities to ensure adequate, reliable, quality, secured and the least-cost supply of electricity so that what they call the “base load coal plants” can become the dominant providers of the electricity needs of Mindanao. Isn’t this against the Renewable Energy Act and Executive Order No. 215?

If our electric cooperatives were only made to operate free from the powers of the National Electrification Administration, these would have operated with the same foresight and efficiency that cooperatives under the Cooperative Development Authority are applying.

With Rep. Reynaldo Umali heading the House energy committee, we look forward to more meaningful power reforms in Mindanao—reforms that will ensure that peoples’ cooperatives operate under the international cooperative principles.

—TEOFREDO L. SOQUINO,
chair, Cooperative Union
of Bukidnon
[email protected]