US, EU envoys visit solar-powered village

COTABATO CITY – US Ambassador Kristie Kenney and representatives of the European Union are visiting today a former war zone in Pagalungan, Maguindanao, whose residents are now benefiting from an off-grid renewable power project which has vastly improved the local economy.

Oscar Sampulna, executive secretary of the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao, said Kenney, Ambassadors Robert Vornis and Alistair McDonald of Holland and the European Union, respectively, Energy Secretary Raphael Lotilla, and ARMM Gov. Zaldy Ampatuan are going to Barangay Linandangan in Pagalungan, where houses of poor farmers are now energized with solar power.

Barangay Linandangan is one of dozens of areas in the ARMM energized by the US-funded Alliance for Mindanao Off-grid Renewable Energy (AMORE) program and the Philippine National Oil Co.

In the past three years, AMORE has supplied portable solar power equipment to almost 4,000 households in isolated communities in Mindanao.

Each of the portable equipment, which collects energy from sunlight and subsequently stores it in car batteries, costs from P50,000 to P75,000.

"The electrification project of AMORE is a big boost to the efforts of Gov. Ampatuan in improving the economy in remote areas in the autonomous region," Sampulna said.

Pagalungan officials said the AMORE project in Barangay Linandangan has significantly boosted the productivity of farmers.

"They can work even at night because they already have power right in their homes," Pagalungan Mayor Macabangen Montawal said in the dialect.