NPA plot to sabotage Casecnan foiled

SAN FERNANDO CITY, Pampanga - Army officials believe they had foiled an attempt by the New People’s Army (NPA) to sabotage the $650-million Casecnan multipurpose irrigation and power project in Pantabangan, Nueva Ecija with Sunday’s arrest of an armed suspected rebel on the lookout for soldiers in neighboring Carranglan town.

Col. Jovenal Narcise, commander of the Army’s 702nd Infantry Brigade, said the arrested man, a certain Terio Agub, yielded an unlicensed Springfield caliber .30 rifle with ammunition and a caliber .22 rifle with ammunition.

Members of the 71st Infantry Battalion nabbed Agub at about 11 a.m. last Sunday near the dam site in Sitio Naagkasungan in Barangay Naglanak, Carranglan.

Agub’s capture, Narcise said, boosted their suspicions that the NPA was, indeed, planning to carry out the purported order of self-exiled communist leader Jose Ma. Sison to sabotage public utilities around the country.

The rebel attacks are supposed to be in retaliation against the government’s declaration of all-out war against armed communist guerrillas after the US government tagged the Communist Party of the Philippines and the NPA as terrorist groups.

The Casecnan project aims to stabilize irrigation to some 102,000 hectares of existing farmlands and to 35,000 hectares of new farms.

It was inaugurated only last year, with the CalEnergy Water and Energy Co. as developer.

The project diverts water from the Casecnan and Taan rivers in Nueva Ecija to the Pantabangan Dam, the water passing through a 26-kilometer long , six-meter wide channel through the Caraballo mountains, and powering a 75-megawatt generator.

The water that fills up the Pantabangan Dam is also harnessed to produce 100 megawatts for the Pantabangan hydropower plant and 12 megawatts more for the nearby Maiway plant.

Narcise said Agub’s arrest was a "proactive measure" to secure the environs of the Casecnan project.