N. Cotabato gov’t to lend funds to reduce 10-hour brownouts

COTABATO CITY—The North Cotabato provincial government is lending funds to the Cotabato Electric Cooperative (Cotelco) to reduce brownouts in the province’s first district, Gov. Emmylou Mendoza said during a forum on Saturday.

Mendoza met with the power stakeholders of Cotelco and the towns of Pigcawayan, Pikit, Alamada, Libungan, Midsayap and Aleosan (PPALMA) to address the problem of 10 to 14 hours of brownout.

During the forum on power curtailment, attended by representatives of Cotelco-PPALMA and other government power agencies, manager Felix Canja said the cooperative needed 13 megawatts a day but was getting only 3 to 4 MW, enough to  supply three to four hours

of power the past few weeks but also forcing 10 to 14 hours of power outages.

Before the power woes in Mindanao, Canja admitted that Cotelco-PPALMA failed to sign a contract with independent power producers for additional power supply on top of the load supplied by the National Power Corp.

Canja said Cotelco-PPALMA tried to purchase power generators but the Energy Regulatory Commission rejected the plan.

Mendoza said the provincial government would extend financial aid so that Cotelco-PPALMA could buy 2 MW from Cotelco-Main.

Last week, Cotelco-PPALMA member consumers held protest actions calling for “presidential intervention” and describing the power situation as “an emerging crisis situation.” Edwin Fernandez, Inquirer Mindanao