Power outages continue in Zamboanga

ZAMBOANGA CITY – Despite pronouncement by the Zamboanga City Electric Cooperative that there will be no more power outages this Christmas season, the city was again without electricity Monday.

Omar Sahi, president of the board of directors of the electric cooperative, has announced that effective December 13, Zamboanga would have sufficient power supply after the Energy Regulatory Commission (ERC) approved recently the 10-year Power Sale Agreement (PSA) between the Zamboanga City Electric Cooperative and Western Mindanao Power Corporation (WMPC) of the Alsons Power Group.

He said residents will have “zero blackouts” because of an additional 50 megawatts of electricity from WMPC after its 18-year PSA contract with National Power Corporation (NPC) ended.

Sahi said Zamboanga consumes at least 85 megawatts every hour and Zamboanga City Electric Cooperative gets additional 56 megawatts of electricity from the NPC and two other power providers - Therma Marine Incorporated and Mapalad Power Corporation.

The cause of the latest power outages was reportedly due to a broken line in Lunzuran village and the transfer of line from National Grid Corporation of the Philippines to WMPC.

The Zamboanga City Electric Cooperative has recently fired its general manager George Ledesma over his failure to improve the worsening power situation here, and installed Ed Ancheta as his replacement. 

Under Ledesma’s 2-year rule, the cooperative’s debt has ballooned to more than P1.4 billion from a little over P1 billion from the past administration. Ledesma said the debts were mostly from his predecessor. (Mindanao Examiner)

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