IN A HURRY. Iloilo Governor Arthur Defensor Jr. has sought the help of Congress to have power issues in the Western Visayas region fixed immediately and avoid a repeat of the outage that plunged Panay, Guimaras, and portions of Negros Occidental in darkness on Jan. 2-5, 2024. In an interview on Tuesday (Jan. 9), Defensor said there is a need to fix it immediately to avoid a repeat of the blackout. (PNA photo by Perla G. Lena)
ILOILO CITY – Iloilo Governor Arthur Defensor Jr. has sought the help of Congress to have power issues here fixed immediately and avoid a repeat of the outage that plunged Panay, Guimaras, and portions of Negros Occidental into darkness on Jan. 2 to 5.
“We are in a hurry. We want to apply pressure, together with the DOE (Department of Energy) and other regulating agencies and Congress. We want to apply pressure that this should be fixed immediately because if not, this will repeat again,” he said in an interview on Tuesday.
Defensor will attend the hearing of the Senate Committee on Energy on Wednesday afternoon that will tackle, among others, a resolution calling for an inquiry in aid of legislation on the power situation in Panay.
He is also a resource person for the Committee on Energy at the House of Representatives, which will have its second deliberation on the power outages in Panay and Western Visayas on April 2023 in relation to the recent blackout.
“We want to pursue two things immediately. Number one, we want to get across that the management of the grid should be perfected immediately by the National Grid Corporation (of the Philippines) and all other concerned. Number two, that the vital infrastructure like the backbone, I mean the Phase 3 of the Cebu-Negros-Panay backbone, together with the other corollary structures like substation should be finished immediately,” he said.
The governor said that if not fixed, Panay and the region will be in danger of experiencing power outage anew because the grid is weak.
“Why is it weak? Because the backbone is not finished. A national grid with an unfinished backbone is weak, like a person without a backbone is dead. A person with a damaged backbone is weak,” Defensor explained.
When left unfixed, it will stop development as among its long-term effects.
The governor added that he wanted to learn more during the hearing as the provincial government contemplates a possible “legal recourse” to “vindicate the damage” the outage has caused the province.
Defensor also expressed his gratitude to President Ferdinand R. Marcos Jr. “for the personal attention he has given to Panay in addressing this power crisis in our region.” (PNA)
