ILOILO CITY – MORE Electric and Power Corp. (MORE Power) led by businessman Enrique Razon has refuted the claim of Rep. France Castro of ACT Teachers party-list that it caused the prolonged blackouts in Panay Island.
REP. France Castro has received an earful from MORE Power over her claim on the Panat blackout.
MORE Power President and CEO Roel Castro said Castro has no basis in her allegations in the January 2 to 5 blackout that affected Aklan, Antique, Capiz, Guimaras, and Iloilo as well this city.
“With respect to the Congresswoman, she doesn’t understand the whole system. It was just an accusation without basis,” said Mr. Castro.
MORE Power is only a distributor of electricity in Iloilo City, the regional capital of Western Visayas, he said.
President Ferdinand R. Marcos Jr. echoed on Friday, January 5, the stand of the Department of Energy (DOE) and the Energy Regulatory Commission (ERC) that privately owned National Grid Corp. of the Philippines (NGCP) is at fault over the blackout.
As systems operator, the Marcos administration said that NGCP had the responsibility of maintaining the stability and integrity of the transmission grid.
The NGCP claimed the blackout was due to the coal-fired power plants here and Iloilo that tripped on January 2.
Mr. Castro noted that the blackout could have been avoided if only NGCP acted on problems of the coal-fired power plants.
“As the system operator, NGCP is supposed to protect the system from collapsing. The fact that a total blackout occurred meant that the system was not protected. This is a simplistic understanding of what happened," Castro said.