The Senate Committee on Public Services is ready to evaluate the 25-year legislative franchise granted to the National Grid Corporation of the Philippines (NGCP). 

Senator Grace Poe, chairperson of the committee, disclosed this on Tuesday, January 9 amid the ongoing power crisis that gripped Western Visayas.

Earlier, some senators have filed separate resolutions calling for the review of the grid operator’s legislative franchise—a privilege granted by Congress to public utilities operators.

“A review of the NGCP franchise is within the powers of Congress to determine whether the grantee should shape up or ship out,” Poe said in a statement.

“For a franchise as critical as the operation and management of power transmission lines, there should be no room for inefficiency, mismanagement or blunders,” she stressed.

She also said the recurring blackout in the Panay Island “showed something needs fixing to ensure uninterrupted delivery of cheap, stable and accessible electricity to our people in Panay.”

“We need to see if the NGCP is keeping up with its obligations under its franchise,” she stressed.

“Our Senate committee on public services is always geared up to conduct a review,” Poe stressed.

Meanwhile, House Deputy Minority leader and ACT Teachers party-list Rep. France Castro stressed the need to nationalize the power sector to prevent a repeat of the massive power black out in Western Visayas. 

Castro said this is to ensure that service not profit is the primary motive of the utility.

“On the distribution side, when less than a handful of low MW (megawatt) units went offline in Panay, to prevent tripping the system should have kicked-in automatic load dropping or manual load dropping (ALD or MLD) to avoid a systemwide collapse. Unfortunately the privately-owned distribution utility (MORE)  in Panay that took over from the former cooperative did not switch to ALD or MLD despite the red alert status,” she pointed out referring to MORE Electric and Power Corp.

“Why? Given thin reserves in Panay, what should have been done was that NGCP and MORE should have coordinated to operationalize either automatic load dropping (ALD) or manual load dropping (MLD). Did it operationalize either? Power would have been restored within hours if they did,” she lamented.

“The Panay blackouts took four days with adverse effects on the lives and economy of the region and these questions should be answered,” Castro said.