Heads must roll over the unexpected brownouts that hit several cities and towns in Luzon despite an earlier assurance from energy officials of an ample power supply with the El Nino phenomenon factored in.
This was the outburst from the usually withdrawn chairman of the Senate Energy Committee, Sen. Sherwin T. Gatchalian, who now called for a Senate probe following a series of yellow and red alert warnings issued by the National Grid Corp. of the Philippines or the Luzon grid this past week.
Reelectionist Sen. Joseph Victor “JV’’ Ejercito said it is time to consider other sources of energy to be added to our current energy mix.
‘’We cannot expect to reach the full potential of economic development if we have expensive, and worse, unstable sources of energy,’’ he said. ‘’Infrastructure plus energy are requisites for economic development,’’ he added.
Gatchalian recalled a meeting two weeks ago with Department of Energy officials who assured him that there is ample supply of electricity reserve throughout the dry season.
“The brownouts felt by our constituents in Luzon these past few days are totally unacceptable. The DoE assured us even before the start of summer that there will be enough power supply in the country. If there’s enough power supply, then how come that there are towns and provinces in Luzon that are experiencing rotational brownouts,” he pointed out,
“Definitely, heads must roll this time. We owe it to the power consumers to give them accurate information on the power situation in the country. Mukhang na-overestimate ng DoE ang available capacity ng kuryente natin,” he added. (Mario Casayuran)