Emergencies a time to eat humble pie for some

The Philippine STAR reported Monday that teams from Aboitiz Power succeeded in energizing an oil-fired power plant in Ermita, Cebu City, run by its subsidiary Cebu Private Power Corp. The Philippine STAR said four Ermita generating units then fed 18 megawatts into Veco for distribution to key priority sectors like hospitals, government facilities, banks, and MCWD, whose pumps need electricity to draw water from its deep wells.

What most Cebuanos don't know is that for its heroic act of starting up Ermita so that power may start flowing quickly into the most vital areas of priority mentioned above, Aboitiz Power, through Veco, could be courting huge fines in the absence of a contract for Veco to draw power from Ermita. Such a contract had just been terminated, after much pressure from the Cebu Chamber of Commerce.

For some time now, the Cebu Chamber has been hounding CPPC and Ermita, which is contracted to supply Veco with peaking and backup power, for being useless and too expensive. Pronouncements by the Energy Regulatory Commission that the Veco-CPPC contract is valid and above-board has not stopped the Chamber's officers from alleging that the ERC is favoring Aboitiz.

The Chamber officers began forum-shopping with their complaint, going to Congress, the Philippine Competition Commission, the Cebu City Council, the Philippine Chamber of Commerce, as well as the Regional Development Council. They want Ermita, being an expensive plant to run, terminated with CPPC refunding consumers all the past payments Veco made to the power plant.

Veco argued a plant in the heart of the city is a critical resource in times of emergencies. To keep that assurance it has to pay a capacity fee, akin to a reservation fee, to ensure the plant is up and ready when needed. But to pacify the Chamber and end all malicious doubts, Aboitiz Power eventually agreed to rescind the Veco-CPPC contract and just schedule another bidding for a power supply agreement to replace the capacity lost from Ermita.

Then Odette came. Transmission lines connecting Veco to its major suppliers in Toledo, Naga, Negros, and Leyte went down and may take weeks to restore. As things would have it, the only power plant ready to run and deliver was, you guessed it, the old reliable Ermita plant. But its contract to deliver had already been terminated just weeks prior, owing to the incessant noise from the Chamber.

Without a contract, Veco is treading dangerously in drawing emergency power from Ermita to supply the emergency needs of hospitals, banks, government facilities and, of course, MCWD, so there will be water for millions of suffering Cebuanos. Veco could be subjected to millions of pesos in fines for lacking the legal capacity to respond to a great public need at a time of great and clear emergency.

Apparently realizing the desperateness of the situation, with simmering public inconveniences just coming to a boil, the RDC, which only recently just endorsed the complaint of the Cebu Chamber against Veco and CPPC, is now egging Veco to sign an emergency power supply contract with CPPC.

But the Cebu Chamber has been eerily quiet so far. Maybe it is time the public demands an explanation for its years of hounding Veco and CPPC. At the very least it needs to tell the public where it stands on an emergency power supply contract between CPPC and Veco. The Chamber needs to embrace the inconvenient truth that emergencies do happen and that when they happen even the help of the enemy is the most welcome thing.