Water, power unstable in Bohol

TAGBILARAN CITY, Philippines — Power outage continues to hit some areas in this city due to generation deficiency in the Visayas grid of the National Grid Corporation of the Philippines (NGCP).

On Monday, the NGCP sent an advisory that customers in Cebu, Negros Occidental, Negros Oriental, Bohol, and Panay would experience partial power interruptions from 8:45 a.m. to 12 noon, 1p.m. to 3 p.m. and 5 p.m. to 8 p.m. because of the deficiency.

Some portions of the city experienced power outages for two to four hours on Monday and, by Tuesday, the NGCP sent another advisory that consumers in the Visayas grid will have partial power interruptions from 8:22 a.m. to around 8 p.m. This time, a major portion of the city has power outage from 8:22 a.m. until 12 noon.

Bohol Water Utilities, Inc. (BWUI) manager, Jun Sonido, attributed the intermittent water supply to households to the unstable power supply. He said BWUI's operation now is still at 75-80 percent because power lack hinders full use of all 21 pumping stations that were spared from the earthquake.

BWUI's generator set has been powering the pumps in Corella town however, said Sonido, and that until Monday evening, the firm's operation was enough for households to have water supply 24 hours.

By Tuesday, the water went intermittent again for some short duration of around 10-30 minutes several times in a day. As of now, BWUI's contractor from Manila continues repairing the 400,000-liter capacity reservoir in Base 1 in barangay Dampas, Tagbilaran City, Sonido added. — (FREEMAN)