Blackout hits most of North Cotabato as power transmission conks out
KIDAPAWAN CITY, North Cotabato, Philippines — Most of the province of North Cotabato was in the dark Saturday evening following the tripping off of the 69KV power transmission line in Barangay (village) Paco here.
Vicente Baguio, spokesperson of the Cotabato Electric Cooperative (Cotelco), said their whole service area experienced “total blackout” due to the tripping, which was reported at around 4:15 p.m.
“We had difficulty locating the damaged area that we needed enough time to restore power in our service area,” Baguio told the Philippine Daily Inquirer in a phone interview.
The power outage prolonged the agony of consumers in the province, which have been experiencing six to seven hours of rotational brownout daily.
The total power outage on Saturday reached at least 10 hours.
“Power had just been restored after six hours of rotational brownout, and yet after five minutes, there was again a brownout,” fish vendor Cleofe Parenas said.
“We are losing at least P150 a day for buying ice just to maintain the freshness of our merchandise,” Parenas said.
Rickson Ajero, a radio station technician here, has challenged Cotelco to tell the truth whether it could still supply power to their consumers.
“Why can’t Cotelco say sorry to their consumers and admit that they cannot bear the burden of supplying power?” Ajero said.
Baguio, however, said they should not be blamed as the problem was with the National Grid Corporation in the Philippines (NGCP), which supplied them with little power, thus the rotational brownout.
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