Samal Island officials, residents lament continuous power outage
Local officials and residents of Garden City of Samal lament the continuous power outage in their area which they said has been disrupting not only their daily activities but also the local tourism.
Island Garden City of Samal Vice Mayor Lemuel Reyes said the continuous power outage has been doing disservice to the local government unit’s aggressive move to promote local tourism since some visitors are discouraged by what he describe as unstable electricity supply.
“We are growing but this (economic) growth is affected. There are a lot of tourists who want to come in but when they would learn the power situation in our area, they would usually back out. We are helpless,” said Reyes.
“One of the biggest problems here is electricity. There is always brownout and the rate is high,” he added.
Early this month, around 3,000 local residents and officials of the Island Garden City of Samal held a rally in front of the office of the Northern Davao Electric Cooperative Inc. (NORDEO) to protest the continuous power outage and high electricity rate.
Reyes said the power rate in their area is P19 per kilowatt hour compared in other areas, which he said, is only P12 per kilowatt hour.
According to Reyes, the problem started in 2016 and still yet to be resolved by NORDECO.
He said there were already measures that were implemented by the local government unit to resolve the problem, including submission of resolutions to the Congress regarding their concern.
Another one, he said, is their support to the proposal of Puwersa ng Bayaning Atleta (PBA) partylist Rep. Margarita Ignacia Nograles to expand the coverage of another power company in the power outage-affected areas to ensure stability of electricity.