Exactly a week ago, we attended the presscon hosted by the BSP Cebu Chapter headed by its chairman Hernando Streegan happily announcing the decision by RTC Judge Meinrado P. Paredes placing a writ of preliminary mandatory injunction against the petitioners and best of all, restoring (resurrecting) the BSP Cebu Council to exist under their local constitution and by-laws until the court decides the case on its merits. Hopefully, this court order would have a humbling effect on the BSP headed by chairman Jejomar Binay not to politicize the Boy Scouts. While this battle was won by the Cebu Boy Scouts… let’s hope that they win the whole war… err the court case I mean.
There was no doubt that this project is a necessity for us in Cebu… except that, many of us thought that the project shouldn’t be too expensive… after all, we power users end up paying for the project anyway. Indeed, the powers-that-be that controls the Central Government has a penchant for grandiose projects, when some projects could be simplified and use less of our scarce resources. Hence we wrote that article to alert the national government for a final look and see whether this project should push through as designed.
Thus we said that the Cebu-Mactan Interconnection Project was simply going to cost too much, it was akin to "buying a Mercedes when a Kia Pride would do the job just as well." Yes, the project cost (taken from the Miyazawa Fund) is pegged at P2.17 billion. On another question, we asked whether this project was going to be "overbuilt" in the sense that it was for a 400 KVA line, which would take 138,000 volts…, which is today’s entire power consumption of Cebu. So why was this going to be for Mactan Island alone?
Last week, I got a call from officials of the National Transmission Corp. (TRANSCO) that their president, Alan T. Ortiz was dropping by Cebu to explain their position on this project. I gathered that Mr. Ortiz was meeting with the Bishop’s Business Conference (BBC) regarding this project. Since I had a meeting at the Mactan International Airport, we had an impromptu meeting with Mr. Ortiz whom I have apparently met in Manila before he joined Transco. Apparently, the article we wrote in The Star about this project caught his attention and prepared a briefing for me to explain my concerns.
We believe strongly that huge government projects like this have a very long gestation period. Hence, we thought that when this project was conceptualized, economic growth especially at the Mactan Export Processing Zone (MEPZ) was moving by leaps and bounds… economic recovery under the Ramos Administration was on the upswing… until the Asian financial crisis of 1997 put a stop to that growth… then add the terrorist activities of the Abu Sayyaf which made embarrassing international headlines and put the brakes on our burgeoning tourism industry.
Meanwhile, China which we never thought was going to be a serious global economic contender, suddenly appeared on the radar screen, then slowly foreign direct investors (FDI) shifted their sights to China. This is not to mention that we were experiencing political instability with the fall and the eventual removal of Erap on EDSA 2. With this in mind, we thought that 400 KVA for Mactan might just be an overkill.
Mr. Ortiz explained to me that this 400 KVA project was not just for the use of Mactan Island… it would also benefit Mandaue City… after all, the line starts in Transco’s Banilad facility in Cebu City. Mandaue City plays host to one of Cebu’s biggest dollar earners outside the MEPZ… the Cebu furniture industry. Well, if you add the problem that the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) is having in China, who knows, FDIs might just come back to SARS-free Philippines for their investments. So our getting that 400 KVA line is acceptable.
Finally, on the question of why this project would be placed underground at great cost as compared to the cheaper alternative for an overhead line… Transco apparently believes that it would find difficulty in securing right-of way (ROW), which would be too expensive to acquire. Apparently, having an overhead line means that the government still has to expropriate the property where the high-tension line passes.
But what triggered this decision was Cebu City ordinance No. 1894 mandating the partial implementation of underground installations for utility lines… admittedly, something that we’ve been complaining about in many columns because of Cebu City’s spaghetti like overhead lines becoming not only ugly, but dangerous to pedestrians and motorists. In the end, land acquisition for ROW would even come out more expensive for the ironically cheaper overhead line. Hence, the better choice was to place this line underground.
At this point, let me say that we appreciate the effort of Mr. Alan Ortiz and Transco to go out of their way to explain to this writer our fears and concerns about this project. While there might just be other ways of doing it, but then the government already studied this project carefully, so we can only wish them Godspeed and hope we won’t see any other controversy coming.