EDITORIAL - Power crisis makes us ripe for the picking

Believe it or not but as the country reeled from severe power shortages that necessitated rotating brownouts that lasted from a low of one to two hours in Cebu to as high as six hours in Cagayan de Oro, the unconscionable opportunists among us silently went to work.

Just as everyone was fanning furiously to ward off the excruciating heat, with some even needing hospitalization for heat stroke, the National Grid Corporation of the Philippines quietly petitioned the Energy Regulatory Board for an increase in rates.

One would have thought that even if the increase is absolutely necessary the NGCP should have at least waited until the public had overcome its suffering before adding what amounts to an insult to the injury.

But now that the cat is out of the bag, one begins to suspect whether the whole shortage in power thing was not a contrived happening designed to bring home the message about how we all are very dependent on power.

One begins to consider the possibility whether people are not being deliberately made to suffer from the power shortage so that the desire for relief becomes so overwhelming that we eventually get softened for the intended whammy called power rate increase.

In case the thought slipped past, let us all be reminded that the power crisis came about when a good number of power plants shut down simultaneously for supposed preventive maintenance checks.

Preventive maintenance checks are normal operating procedures. And even if multiple power plants shut down together as if on cue, one does not begin to suspect any subterfuge until one player in the cast makes the miscue of asking for an increase prematurely.

But the NGCP did ask for an increase and that is very ill-timed. Or is it? Come to think of it, perhaps the petition for an increase was in fact timed perfectly. It was deliberately made at a time when people agonized from the brownouts, making them ripe for relief at any cost.