Chan made the comment Wednesday, Feb. 8, 2023, after expressing his dismay that the Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH) sent only a maintenance engineer to attend the executive session that he had called to discuss the rotating brownouts that Meco has started imposing on its customers following the cable line accident.
Chan has also ordered the City Legal Office to study the possibility of the City suing the DPWH over its failure to address the issue head-on.
He also urged his wife, Lapu-Lapu City Lone District Rep. Ma. Cynthia “Cindi” Chan, to request a congressional inquiry against the DPWH.
“Isip amahan sa siyudad sa Lapu-Lapu, dili ko makaako nga akong pasagdan ang atong mga anak nga maoy mag-abaga sa bayrunon sa sala ni DPWH,” said Chan, adding that the City will not stop until DPWH takes responsibility for the impact of the hit a power cable sustained amid the ongoing road projects of the agency in the area.
(As father of the city of Lapu-Lapu, I cannot let our children be the ones to pay for the sins of the DPWH.)
Chan called for an executive session Wednesday with the City Council, National Grid Corp. of the Philippines (NGCP), Meco and DPWH in order for them to shed light on the impacts of the damaged main electric cable line of the NGCP situated at the crossroads of Ouano Ave. and UN Ave. in Mandaue City.
The area has two operating cable lines powered by the NGCP—one that supplies electricity to Mandaue City through the Visayan Electric Company, and the other one for Meco.
Line 2, which supplies power to the entire Lapu-Lapu City and Municipality of Cordova, was hit amid the ongoing road projects of the DPWH in the area.
Engineer Gilbert Pagobo, senior vice president and general manager of Meco, said its power rate may rise to P20 from P8.50 per kilowatt hour (kWh) depending on the generation charge of their sources of electricity.
“Ang gipadala sa DPWH wala puy authority nga motubag mahitungod sa ilang sala o kon sila ang mobayad sa difference sa bayrunon sa kuryente,” said Chan.
(The representative DPWH sent has no authority to answer questions about their offense and whether they would pay the difference in the electricity bill caused by their offense.)
“That is supposed to be an executive session. I am really dismayed why it is not the heads of DPWH who attended the session when the problem is serious,” the mayor added.
The DPWH representative said he was just assigned to attend the session, although the City Council addressed the invitation to DPWH Sixth District Engineer Daisy Toledo.
With this, the mayor said he will invite to another meeting the director of the DPWH in Central Visayas as well as Toledo, the City Council, Meco and NGCP this week.
Brownouts begin
This, as Chan noted that the brownout just started on Wednesday morning, Feb. 8, and yet the increase was already being imposed.
Saying some employees of the Mactan Economic Zone were sent home due to the brownout, Chan said this merely showed the size of the damage it would bring to the city.
He noted the domino effects the problem brings, adding that the Mactan-Cebu International Airport, as well as resorts, hotels and other business are operating in the city.
Pagobo had warned last month that consumers might experience power outages until the cable is fixed.
Pagobo said Wednesday that they are currently sourcing power supply from East Asia Utilities Corp. (EAUC) to help meet the city’s demand for electricity.
But he stressed that EAUC uses diesel which is costly, which is why the generation rate may go as high as P20 per kWh.
To lessen the impact on the economic activities in the city, Chan said Meco may implement brownouts at the time when malls do not operate.
The mayor assured his constituents that they will not accept the increase in electricity cost considering that it is not the people who damaged the cable line.
The mayor emphasized that the representative from DPWH’s Sixth Engineering District said during the session that it was the DPWH administration that was undertaking an excavation for a drainage project when it hit the cable line in January this year.
The representative, who claimed to have no wide knowledge about the matter, said there was no contractor involved in the incident.
The representative from NGCP Visayas, on the other hand, said they could not yet give a timeline on when they could fully repair the cable line since they still had to undertake a bidding process.
But the repair will take more or less 65 to 70 days to complete as they assured their best efforts.
Abner Bardoquillo, head of the NGCP Visayas network operation division, said the capacity left of the other cable online is 180 megawatts, serving two customers — Meco and Visayan Electric.
Bardoquillo said 120 megawatts is intended for Meco, although he stressed that Mactan Island, including Lapu-Lapu City and Cordova, has a higher demand than this.
Third offense
This was already the third time that NGCP’s cable lines were involved in an accident caused by the ongoing road projects of the DPWH.
The first incident happened in one of its cable lines near the corner of D.M. Cortes St. and A.C. Cortes Ave. in 2015, followed by another at the intersection of UN Avenue and D.M. Cortes in 2019. It took NGCP six months to repair the line in the 2019 incident.
Pagobo said the cable line supplies power to the entire Lapu-Lapu City and Cordova town.
In January, he said the power outages may occur for one to two hours per day, possibly at the start of the summer season until the cable is fixed.
Pagobo said malls and hotels would be included in the rotating brownouts.
