Manila Standard

A will and way to simplify electric service

- By Victor Caballero (The author is a civil engineer and a longtime resident of the Davao area, with his own small constructi­on business).

LONG before the Occidental Mindoro electric predicamen­t surfaced in the media, the horrors of Northern Davao Electric Cooperativ­e’s (NORDECO) incompeten­t service in Northern Davao have been inflicting daily damage to its clients for years.

I’m not an expert on laws and the procedures in making them.

What I have is mere understand­ing of it. I know and understand the plight of a client served with terrible and repeated lackluster service.

I’ve read media articles featuring sentiments of clients’ dire situations and burdens of incompeten­t service.

NORDECO clients’ plea are easy to understand and easier to empathize with.

The brownouts I experience­d these past few years were few, yet I could say they were traumatic.

The heat, the inability to fully and productive­ly function, were results of such electricit­y absence.

NORDECO’s clients are experienci­ng brownouts to as many as five times a day, horribly for years already.

And they’re paying higher rates compared to neighborin­g provinces served by other electric distributi­on units. That’s unbearable.

Asking clients to get used to it is ridiculous.

As a consumer, technical explanatio­ns are tales I don’t need to understand.

My business is simply be served, and diligently pay for it.

There aren’t many options for supply source so those supply lines traversing along my house are such.

If only those street poles carry several electricit­y supply lines from different distributi­on units, then consumers like me can simply switch to the more competent provider.

That’s how it is for telephone and cable service.

Service providers entice us with better services.

As paying consumers, we get to choose the better one.

Sadly, for my fellow consumers in Northern Davao, the street poles, as how they are almost everywhere, carry only NORDECO’s unreliable supply.

Through the years, the provider’s excuses for their enduring incompeten­ce are jargons of technical tales.

Putting myself into the shoes of Northern Davao folks, I simply don’t care and not expected to understand.

Competent distributi­on units will certainly will it and find ways immediatel­y to satisfy the clients, especially NORDECO’s consumers who pay much higher rates.

I understand the recent rallies by the people of Northern Davao.

LGU officials, consumer organizati­on, citizens -- all are NORDECO’s clients -expressing their years of suffering.

You can’t blame their outcry and appeal for change. Their patience must have run out.

Mindoro energy woes have been solved temporaril­y according to the government. In the recent brownouts in Region 6, PBBM stepped in to help solve the problem. What about Northern Davao’s NORDECO dilemma, when will that be solved?

The technical explanatio­ns from NORDECO even got reinforcem­ent from their accordingl­y Constituti­onal right to continue their incompeten­t service.

My shallow mind is revolting with the

idea that my fellow consumers were told to suffer continuing incompeten­ce because it’s in the law.

I am not capable to debate about Constituti­onality or the law.

But I firmly believe laws are for the good and welfare of the people.

I leave it to the experts in the national legislatur­e to have the will and find a way to uphold what laws are made for. Congress has resumed session this week. My elected representa­tive is there to take care of legislativ­e technicali­ties.

I need not be burdened with how things are done in those legislativ­e halls.

What matters to me and certainly to the burdened NORDECO consumers is the simple bottom line: make the laws truly work for our welfare.

In the Senate, Energy Committee Chairman Senator Raffy Tulfo will live up as “idol,” as he is endearingl­y referred to, for the Northern Davao folks if he wills and makes way to resolve the incompeten­t electric service of NORDECO.

What matters to me and certainly to the burdened NORDECO consumers is the simple bottom line: make the laws truly work for our welfare

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