By Calvin Cordova
CEBU CITY—The Department of Energy (DOE) in Central Visayas assured there will be enough power supply in the region for the May 13 elections.
Department of Energy (MANILA BULLETIN)
Jose Rey Maleza, DOE regional officer-in-charge, said the agency has reactivated its Energy Task Force Election, a plan in which DOE will coordinate with the Commission on Elections (Comelec) to make sure that there will be no power interruptions at polling centers.
The Visayan Electric Company (VECO) expressed its preparedness for the elections.
Anton Mari Perdices, VECO chief operating officer, said a contingency plan is in place and it includes the deployment of emergency crews near the schools that will be converted into polling precincts.
Meanwhile, the National Grid Corporation of the Philippines (NGCP) announced power plants in the Visayas grid have no scheduled maintenance on election day.
"We can safely say that we have sufficient power supply during the election. Remaining capacity is still sufficient for the requirement of the grid," Diosdado Sandulan, NGCP senior manager of the Visayas Network Planning.
A dry run will be conducted by the task force from May 6-10.
Also on May 10, the Comelec office in Cebu will conduct the synchronized final testing and sealing of the more than 6,000 vote-counting machines (VCM).
Acting Cebu Provincial Election Supervisor Jerome Brillantes said Cebu has 6,716 clustered precincts and each precinct will have one VCM.
There are also spare VCMs standing by in case some machines malfunction.
The VCMS arrived last month and are being stored in a heavily guarded warehouse of a courier company in Mandaue City.