GOV’T AGENCY TAKES OVER CATANDUANES POWER CO-OP
The National Electrification Administration (NEA) had taken over First Catanduanes Electric Cooperative, or Ficelco, “to ensure proper delivery of electric service to member-consumers.”
The NEA, which supervises 121 electric cooperatives nationwide, also issued an order designating Orlando Andres as acting Ficelco general manager.
Andres, a project supervisor, had been tasked with managing Ficelco’s day-today operations and to ensure the cooperative’s operational efficiency.
“With NEA’s takeover, island residents are now assured of better electric services after months of persistent power outages when the cooperative was still under the leadership of its president, Alexander Hung,” the NEA said in a statement.
Clamor
The agency said business owners, civic groups and Church leaders in Catanduanes had “long been clamoring for the takeover of the island’s electric cooperative by NEA,” as they were enduring six- to eight-hour daily rotating brownouts.
The NEA said that, in a recent audit, it found that the brownouts were due to the cooperative’s failure to establish proper system operations, dispatch protocol and power reliability measures despite the anticipated surge in power demand during the hot summer months.
In a related development, the NEA said it had rolled out the completion stage of its three-phase Business Intelligence Technology (BIT) project, which harnesses advance data management to help boost electrification efforts.
Online system
NEA Administrator Edgardo Masongsong said the online BIT system was designed to assist the country’s 121 electric cooperatives (ECs) in rural electrification.
Masongsong, in a statement, said information generated from the web portal would assist the NEAin gaining timely and holistic analysis on the EC’s current state and business operational performance.
Funded by the World Bank with technical assistance from information technology firm Indra, the NEA BIT was a result of collaboration between the NEA and ECs since 2015.