Zambo City folk ask government to act on power woes

ZAMBOANGA CITY , Philippines  – Residents of this southern city are calling on the government to act decisively on their worsening power situation, saying the outages have triggered a noticeable increase in crime rates and in structural fire.

 “The government should act on our power situation immediately. The longer it will take for our government officials to act on our problem, the more lives and sufferings it will cost us,” a resident said.

Residents said that after enjoying a blackout-free election day, they are back to the daily two-hour power interruptions, with no end in sight to their energy woes, brought about by the staggered supply scheme being implemented by the Zamboanga City Electric Cooperative (Zamcelco).

Power consumers, who have banded themselves as the Federated Member Consumer Electrification Committee (FMCEC), said the rotating blackouts have made certain areas of the city “unsafe especially during the night.”

FMCEC president Agustin Graciano Jr. said aside from the rise in fire incidence caused by the blackouts, there has also been a worsening crime wave in the city since the beginning of the electricity shortages. 

“We call on the government to help us solve our power problem in Zamboanga City,” Graciano said.

He said that in Barangay Mampang alone, at least three people are killed every week, with most of the murders done “under cover of darkness.” 

The FMCEC is a member-organization of the 114,000-strong Zamcelco covering the city’s 98 barangays. Its membership represents a cross section of the religious, youth, farmers’ and business sectors.

The rotating blackouts in this city, which started last February, was triggered by the sharp decrease in Lake Lanao’s water level due to the prolonged drought brought about by the El Niño weather phenomenon.

The National Power Corp. (Napocor) could not operate its hydropower facilities at normal capacities because of the critically low water levels at the lake.

This resulted in about 700-megawatt (MW) deficiency in the Mindanao grid at the height of the power crisis, forcing distribution utilities to adopt power curtailment measures of up to 12 hours. 

According to Zamcelco sources, the water level in Lake Lanao has improved a bit, but the grid will still have a 300-MW deficiency until June 30, hence the city would continue to suffer daily two-hour power interruptions.

Zamcelco, however, is confronted by a bigger power problem. Its existing transition power supply agreement with the Napocor will expire this August, after which the state-run facility could only enter into a floating power supply agreement with the cooperative because many Napocor power plants have already been privatized.

Distribution utilities with existing supply contracts with the Napocor have the priority on its generated power.

Under a floating power supply agreement, Zamcelco can buy power from Napocor only if the latter has excess capacity to sell. At present, Zamcelco is fully dependent on the Napocor for its electricity requirements.

To correct the imbalance, Zamcelco recently signed a supply agreement with a wholesale aggregator to supply 30-MW emergency capacity to restore its supply of electricity to normal levels.

Zamcelco’s peak power demand reaches up to 90 MW. The lowest supply it got from the grid at the height of the Mindanao power crisis was 57 MW.

The purchase contract is current under final evaluation by the Energy Regulatory Commission.