No quick end seen to Marinduque power woes

BOAC, Marinduque—Residents of this island province will have to hold on longer to their patience and fans as electricity wasn’t expected to be restored soon following an outage that started Thursday.

Provincial Board Member Alan Nepomuceno said by phone on Thursday that provincial officials had a meeting with representatives of the National Power Corp. (Napocor) and Marinduque Electric Cooperative (Marelco) on July 25 and were told that the bidding for the supply of 1.7 million liters of diesel for the province’s power plant had just been concluded.

The first delivery of the fuel is expected on Aug. 5 and until then residents have to contend with having no power in their homes.

Nelson Molina, plant superintendent of the Napocor–Boac Diesel Power Plant, said in a July 22 advisory that the 108,000 liters of diesel delivered on July 21 was expected to last only until July 27.

He said since there has been no new fuel delivery the plant has to be shut down if it runs out of fuel.

The six towns of the province has been suffering from eight to 16-hour daily outages since July 21 as a result of the lack of fuel for the power plant. Some interior villages have no electricity the whole day.

The 1.7 million liters of diesel that will be delivered next week are sufficient for 40 days and is expected to last until the second week of September.

Nepomuceno, however, said despite the delivery of fuel expected next week, the province was still expected to suffer eight to 16-hour outages because some parts of the plant are under repair.