Misor board grills Moresco II over outages

By LITO RULONA
and SHIELA MAE BUTLIG
Correspondent .

Members of the Sangguniang Panlalawigan took turns in grilling the management of Misamis Oriental Electric Rural Cooperative-II (Moresco II) after they explained poorly on the cause of frequent outages in their area of responsibility.

During Monday’s regular session, Vice Governor Jeremy Jonahmar Pelaez said the management failed to satisfy the members of the Provincial Board in answering the clamor of the consuming public on their poor services.

“They explained nga ang permi blackout is caused by the branches sa mga kahoy nga mosaghid sa ilang linya in which dili satisfied ang atong mga PB members. Kung naay kusog kuno nga hangin mapalong gyud ang ilang supply,” he said.

He said he recommends that they should be professional in monitoring their cables as part of the strict services they can impose to satisfy the public clamor.

“They should enhance their maintenance level kay compared to other electric providers talagsa ra man nila kini masinati,” he added.

For the last two years, the same reason was being uttered by Engr. Ronel Cañada, Moresco II general manager, to give them time to upgrade their system over the power outages long being suffered by consumers in eastern Misamis Oriental.

Assistant Majority Floor Leader Wayne Militante said power outages have been occurring in the eastern part of the province for the past several years and it is getting worse in the last two weeks as frequent outages were experienced.

“This is a recurring problem and what happened in the last two weeks which is the worst experience ever by the consuming public,” he said.

Cañada replied frequent outages in the past two weeks happened during the strong winds brought by “Typhoon Hannah.” He presented pictures before the plenary on what happened during the typhoon that hit their service area on Aug. 3 and 5.

He said his technical working team is working double-time so that they can restore the power the soonest time possible in the affected areas from the municipalities of Magsaysay to Claveria.

“Some areas of our distribution line is being affected by the vegetation which sprouting side by side that mainly caused power interruption,” he explained.

Cañada admitted that due to the fact that 90 percent of Moresco II’s lines pass through private properties. Landowners, he said, were demanding compensation they cannot regularly impose some maintenance work.

“We cannot also force them because it will create trouble between the consumer and the maintenance,” he explained.

But Militante said the same reason was being explained by the management and they have not taken into a serious solution to it.

Militante said Moresco II is mismanaged and cash-strapped.

Board Member Gerardo Sabal told Cañada that they have a poor service while they collect high charge to the consumer that ranges to  12.45 per kilowatt hour and if VAT will added it will sum up to 13.05.

For his part, Cañada said that rate was base and was approved by the Energy Regulatory Commission.