In hitting the rotational power outages that marred many parts of the country, Senator Manny Pacquiao, during a privilege speech Wednesday, took potshots at Energy Secretary Alfonso Cusi for failing to do his job.
Pacquiao and Cusi have been at loggerheads over the PDP-Laban National Council meeting in Cebu City on Monday.
Despite the apparent rift with Pacquiao, Cusi said he is open to participate in the planned meeting between the lawmaker and President Rodrigo Duterte to discuss issues hounding the ruling party.
On the Senate floor, Pacquiao renewed his call to stop politicking due to the country’s many problems that need solutions.
“But it’s sad to think that many officials who should be managing the situation we are facing deliberately failed to hear and even prioritized politics over resolving our problems,” he said.
Pacquiao asked if the government should brace for bigger power supply problems. He also questioned the preparations it had done to counter the problems due to the surge in power supply demand.
“This is a recurring problem. We cannot rely on the same strategies to solve the problem of the rapidly growing demand for power supply,” said Pacquiao.
He cited the need to innovate and secure renewable energy sources.
Meanwhile, Cusi said he and the DOE were addressing the thin power supply hounding the Luzon grid amid criticisms that he is more focused on politics.
“I’m aware of the situation and I trust the DOE people, officers… We are not neglecting our duty and with the technology even if I’m in Cebu, we are monitoring, working, and deciding,” Cusi said during the virtual Kapihan sa Manila Bay.
He said the current situation was a “neck and neck” issue of demand exceeding supply and the “fortuitous event, things beyond our control” when four power plants broke down simultaneously.
“We had been addressing this in the very beginning and even in the JCEC (Joint Congressional Energy Commission) we have been saying that we cannot always have red or yellow alerts every Christmas or summer season when the demand is at its peak,” Cusi said.
“We all know that this electricity, energy industry is all in the hands of the private sector, from generation, distribution, transmission and all those things. Government provides the policy,” he added.
“Now under the (power) generation (sector), people want to make sure that the plants they are investing in will immediately have markets, because they will not go into debt without a power supply contract in hand,” Cusi said.
While the country had enough power supply, “unfortunately there are unforeseen breakdowns” and that about 1,600 megawatts were lacking from the current supply “for one reason or another,” he said.
Cusi, who sits as vice chairman of PDP-Laban, presided over the ruling party’s national council meeting on Monday in Cebu, when the council adopted a resolution calling on President Rodrigo Duterte to run for vice president in the 2022 elections.
The meeting coincided with the raising of red and yellow alerts over Luzon due to thin power supply caused by planned and unplanned outages of several power plants.
The camp of Pacquiao has accused Cusi of violating party rules when he called the Cebu meeting.
Pacquiao, who boycotted the meeting, even convinced partymates not to show up in the said event.
It was reported that President Duterte directed Cusi to convene the meeting.
On Tuesday, PDP-Laban executive director Ron Munsayac said Pacquiao was seeking a meeting with Duterte to discuss the "simple misunderstanding" within the party.
But Malacañang said there was no schedule for the meeting yet but was seeing no reason why a meeting between Duterte and Pacquiao – the chairman and acting president of PDP-Laban, respectively — could not push through.
Pacquiao said he rallied behind Senate Energy committee chairperson Win Gatchalian and their colleagues in calling for accountability for all concerned government agencies, particularly the energy department.
Earlier, Gatchalian stressed there should be an unimpeded power supply for the cold storage facilities of COVID-19 vaccines.
Sen. Christopher Go, chair of the Senate health committee, noted: “We cannot afford to have brownouts at this time when we have started the vaccination rollout.”
“No vaccines should be wasted because we worked hard to get these vaccines due to limited supply.”
He said all countries “are racing to get the vaccines to ward off the new coronavirus.”
Go said he and the President would talk to Cusi since the energy department said the brownouts were triggered by high heat index that recently increased demand for power and caused unscheduled maintenance work in key plants in Luzon. It also cited the low gas pressure from Malampaya.
For her part, Senator Risa Hontiveros is calling for an investigation into the rotational blackouts experienced by some areas in Luzon after its grid was placed under red alert status, forcing distribution utilities to implement load shedding.
Hontiveros, a member of the Senate’s Committee on Energy, says impending brownouts and the onslaught of Tropical Storm Dante present an extra logistical challenge for unadministered vaccines sitting in freezers.
Since Tuesday, Luzon was placed on red alert status due to additional power plant outages.
Bayan Muna party-list Rep. Carlos Isagani Zarate has called on Cusi to address the thin power supply in Luzon instead of attending to intramurals in the ruling PDP-Laban.
