NGCP to repair line damaged by backhoe

CEBU, Philippines - The National Grid Corporation of the Philippines (NGCP) is set to repair its damaged high voltage line along Plaridel and A.C. Cortes Streets in Mandaue City anytime this month.

This was announced by Ma. Rosette Martinez, NGCP’s spokesperson, in a press conference at the Mandaue City’s Command Center yesterday morning.

Martinez said it will take them 45 days to repair the damaged line as they need to order the customized cable lines in Korea.

But she said power users have nothing to worry about as this is only a “backup line,” which means effects like brownout will not happen within this period.

Martinez said “we will have this repair as soon as possible,” as delaying it may result to possible brownouts “in case of events” such as problems concerning their other transmission lines.

In this area, NGCP has two 7.3-kilometer transmission lines that run along Mandaue City to the Mandaue-Mactan Bridge.

Together, they serve 138,000 volts of power for the cities of Mandaue and Lapu-Lapu and parts of Cebu City.

PLD Construction excavated the road for a concreting project last October 20 when its backhoe allegedly hit one of  the two NGCP lines.

Martinez said the damaged portion is only short but they will just have to repair the 50-meter stretch as also part of the rehabilitation process.

She added that although PLD could be made liable for the damage, they are not yet “focused on claiming damages” as their priority is to tackle the repairs first.

She said there were other instances that excavation for road projects had accidentally hit their lines, but this is the first time in Cebu since they laid their underground cables in 2005.

She said this is one of the few, if not the only, disadvantages of putting cables underground.

She said they put some concrete slabs to protect their cables but the slabs proved frail compared to the backhoe.

Meanwhile, Engineer Gerardo Torres, NGCP’s head of Visayas operations and maintenance, said when they start the repairs, they will make sure that they will only use one lane to still allow vehicles to use the other half of the road. (FREEMAN)