SAN JOSE, Occidental Mindoro—Residents and business owners of the two Mindoro provinces have asked their government leaders to act on the power shortages sweeping this island for several months now.
This developed as an estimated 5,000 electric consumers from several municipalities of Occidental Mindoro signed a petition addressed to Energy Secretary Carlos Jericho Petilla to “investigate the almost two decades of six-to-12-hour blackouts in Occidental Mindoro.”
The power problem peaked Thursday, May 21, when a 16-hour black-out hit Sablayan municipality and its adjoining towns. Sablayan is the center of agricultural—rice, corn and fishery—production in this province.
On May 13, a 10-hour outage swept through Mamburao and other adjoining towns.
In Oriental Mindoro, power outages are also being experienced by residents and operators of business establishments.
They also complained of three-to-eight hour blackouts in its 15 municipalities, including Calapan City and Puerto Galera, a major resort town.
Congressman Reynaldo V. Umali, chairman of the House committee on energy, resides in the province.
The petitioners also called on the Department of Energy official to “end the culture of impunity that prevents residents from gaining access to stable, renewable and affordable electricity.”
Lawyer Patti Miranda, one of the convenors of the social movement, “100% Brown-Out Free Occidental Mindoro (100% BFOM),” said the “16-hour power outage in Sablayan does not occur regularly or daily. It really fluctuates, in April, seven-to-14 hours ang brown-out.”
Aside from government inaction, the petition also stressed that the worsening power problem is aggravated “by long legal battles between Occidental Mindoro Electric Cooperative, Inc. (Omeco) and Island Power Corporation (IPC),” an independent power producer, who cornered a 25-year exclusivity contract with Omeco.
“Our electric cooperative is hogtied by litigation, the reason why the economic growth is paralyzed by the 17-year power crisis,” the BFOM said.
“We and thousands of Mindoreños refuse to kowtow any longer and accept that blackouts are a way of life while we wait for the protracted litigation to end,” the 100% BFOM petition stressed.
They said that “the 17 years of daily brownouts is economically devastating, demoralizing, and a violation of our human right to access to electricity. Occidental Mindoro’s power crisis needs an urgent resolution.”