Villagers start fencing power towers

ALEOSAN, North Cotabato—Heeding a suggestion made by the town police chief, residents of Barangay Pagangan here, with the help of the local police force and the local government, had fenced two power pylons bombed in recent days to prevent the structures from being attacked again.

The previous bombings of Tower 63 and Tower 68 in the village had caused massive power outages that lasted for hours in the provinces of Maguindanao and North Cotabato.

The latest attack was on March 1, when Tower 63 was bombed after the attackers failed to topple it on Jan. 14. Tower 68 was bombed in December.

Senior Insp. Jun Jinete Napat, Aleosan police chief, said he came up with the idea of putting up fences around the two towers in the hope of securing these from future attacks.

After securing the materials needed from the local government and from the office of Mayor Vicente Suropia, Napat said residents of Pagangan immediately started putting up the fences.

“The LGU (local government unit) produced the bamboo and barbed wire,” said Napat.

“The police helped in putting up the barriers and a watchman from the village was assigned to each tower,” he said.

“Mobile phones came from the LGU and allowances from NGCP (National Grid Corp. of the Philippines) for the watchmen,” said Napat. “It was all bayanihan,” he said.

“This is our contribution, this is a community effort to spare us from brownouts,” said the police chief.

The two towers are now surrounded by fences reaching 6 feet tall (1.83 meters) and made of bamboo poles and tied with barbed wires.

Napat said he is studying the possibility of replicating the Pagangan effort in others areas of the town, which hosts at least 17 NGCP transmission towers.

The structures carry the 138-kilovolt line from the Kabacan NGCP substation to the Simuay substation in Sultan Kudarat, Maguindanao.

“Our plan is to fence all the 17 towers within Aleosan, our area of operation,” Napat added.

Last week, North Cotabato police officials urged NGCP to implement tighter security in its power distribution towers following another attempt to topple Tower 63.

Supt. Bernard Tayong, spokesperson of the North Cotabato police office, said the NGCP management could tap the services of private security forces to guard power distribution towers to prevent more attacks on transmission facilities that are key to keeping electricity flowing to consumers in Mindanao.

At least 16 NGCP towers have been bombed in North Cotabato, Maguindanao and Lanao del Sur in 2015 alone, according to Melfrance Capulong, NGCP spokesperson for Mindanao.

Capulong said the bombings not only disrupted the company’s services but also became added burdens to consumers who would eventually have to pay the costs of repairing the damaged pylons, which run to P2 million each. Edwin Fernandez, Inquirer Mindanao