One crisis down, many more to go

Isn’t it great when things work? And things don’t work by accident. Things work because there was meticulous preparation. One could almost feel the joy of P-Noy that somehow, the government bureaucracy, surprise, surprise, managed the preparations and the response to Typhoon Juan quite well. Sure, there were casualties but the no casualty goal was unrealistic and only served to rally the troops to give it their best.

It helps that P-Noy’s anger over the failure of PAGASA to predict the path of the first typhoon in his watch was fresh in the bureaucracy’s memory. They made extra effort to really get it right this time. And they did. In fact, the tracking of the storm was done in a way that the public could actually follow Juan as it entered our area of responsibility.

It was also encouraging to hear people being evacuated way before the typhoon reached their areas. And relief operations were launched as soon as it was practical and safe. That’s how government is expected to operate in times of emergency. Hopefully, we get this kind of reaction all the time as a way of differentiating this regime from its predecessors. But they still need a good post mortem if only to see where things could be done better.

We will have a few more typhoons before the year is over, according to the weather bureau. At least now, we are more confident about government’s ability to respond well.

The next big crisis I see will be more difficult and it is expected to hit us next year. It is an inherited crisis in the sense that the previous administration should have taken steps during their watch to address it but they didn’t. Nevertheless, the onus of doing something about it falls on the current administration.

I am talking about the power crisis that is expected to hit the main Luzon Grid next year. Even the Department of Energy acknowledges its imminence in their planning papers. Here are a couple of paragraphs in a briefing paper on the power situation from DOE:

“With the scheduled retirement of the 650-MW Malaya Oil Thermal plant, dependable capacity of existing power plants in the Luzon grid will decrease to 9.380 MW in 2011 from the 10,030 MW in 2009. However, with the completion of Bacman Plant Unit I-2 and Unit II rehabilitation in 2011 and 2013, an additional 74.3 MW will be added in the system.

“With the projected 4.5 percent annual average growth rate on the peak demand, the critical period in Luzon grid, (where the capacity will not be able to meet the demand and the reserve margin requirement), is projected in 2011. On the same year, the system needs an additional peaking capacity of 300 MW.”

Actually, those two paragraphs should even be considered optimistic. The requirement of 300 MW of peaking capacity is on the assumption that all the other plants are working smoothly. In reality, we need at least 1,200 MW in reserve because that’s the capacity of Sual, the largest plant in the Grid and we should be ready to cover that if it goes on the blink.

Indeed, Sual and another plant, Pagbilao (in Quezon), were off at about the time Typhoon Juan exited the country and not for any reason related to the typhoon. They just conked out. The rotating brownouts we experienced were not because of the damage caused by Typhoon Juan but more because of the unexpected malfunction of these plants.

Sual in particular had been problematic and it is the biggest. Imagine that in addition to the 300 MW, which DOE says we need for peaking, we must have 1,200 MW every time Sual goes off line. Otherwise, the rotating brownouts in the Grid would be more often and longer. In fact, many of my friends in the power industry are telling me to think of getting a small generator for my house if only to power the refrigerator and some lights to minimize the certain inconvenience next year.

There is little P-Noy can do now except to hurry up his energy planners with measures that will mitigate this certain crisis. They can probably delay the retirement of Malaya… and be serious on what to do with the Sucat plants. It is possible that those old Meralco plants which were retired years ago. But effort must be made to see what can be done with them… dismantle and put up a new natural gas power plant perhaps?

Even then, things will take time. No one buys a power plant off the shelf ready for use. These are designed for specific sites and getting financing is the tough part. There must be a reason why there aren’t too many proposals to put up power plants in Luzon even with the certainty of a shortage. Maybe government needs to review the investment environment.

P-Noy should call his Energy Secretary and the rest of his economic team to an urgent meeting in that newly renovated Malacanang crisis room and get a good briefing on the situation. They have to treat this problem as if a Category 4 or 5 typhoon is on the way because that’s the devastating impact to the economy if those brownouts happen next year… if not even more severe.

In the end, the brownouts may still be unavoidable because we can’t get those power plants on short notice. But if the government has a plan and is seriously working to get things in place, investors and our people will feel there is hope.

Migrants

I got this e-mail from reader Walter Ty.

I read your write-up on anti-migrant sentiment with interest. Even though a great deal of this sentiment is Islamophobia in many European countries due to events in the post-11 September 2001 world, it’s inevitable that Filipino migrant workers will be affected one way or another. Faltering economies in the United States and Europe with growing unemployment and insecurity among the native-born populations will unavoidably lead to immigration restrictions. 

But I think our own government should bear its share of responsibility for being short-sighted & not looking in the long-term with regards to our OCWs. Short-sighted, narrow nationalism with regards to foreign investment restrictions as exercised by the elite & vested interests throwing their weight around with elected government officials (rent-seeking) has hampered the entry of such investments that could have provided employment opportunities to our citizens, thus forcing them to seek employment outside the country. 

A growing birth rate without a sound, rational family planning program due to Roman Catholic Church opposition to contraception has also contributed to this lack of economic opportunities for our increasing labor force. A partial remedy for this is to liberalize the investment climate to allow foreign companies to operate with minimal restrictions, cut bureaucratic red tape, minimize corruption, invest in infrastructure, & implement a family planning program as typified by the reproductive health bills currently pending in the legislature. 

These may not solve our country’s problems in the short term but it would hopefully lead to a formation of a sizeable middle class with disposable income who would not feel the need to seek greener pastures elsewhere.

Women

My daughter Trishy sent this one.

Barbara Walters, of 20/20, did a story on gender roles in Kabul, Afghanistan, several years before the Afghan conflict. She noted that women customarily walked five paces behind their husbands.

She recently returned to Kabul and observed that women still walk behind their husbands. Despite the overthrow of the oppressive Taliban regime, the women now seem to, and are happy to, maintain the old custom.

Ms. Walters approached one of the Afghani women and asked, “Why do you now seem happy with an old custom that you once tried so desperately to change?”

The woman looked Ms. Walters straight in the eyes, and without hesitation said, “Land Mines.”

Moral of the story is (no matter what language you speak or where you go) BEHIND EVERY MAN, THERE’S A SMART WOMAN.

Boo Chanco’s e-mail address is [email protected]. Past columns may be accessed at www.boochanco.net