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The good
news is the government is hastening its rural
electrification program, with the National
Electrification Administration (NEA) optimistic it can
achieve 100-percent barangay electrification by next
year. According to the Department of Energy (DOE), a
total of 40,752 or 97 percent of barangays across the
country already have access to electricity. This leaves
only 3 percent of the country’s 42,000 barangays, or
just 1,438 more barangays, still to be energized.
The
electric cooperatives have energized 96 percent of the
36,030 barangays within their coverage areas serving
7.86 million house connections, or 68 percent of their
total potential connections, benefiting about 45 million
Filipinos nationwide.
With the
recent signing of an agreement between the NEA, on the
one hand, and electric cooperatives, industry partners,
donor/funding institutions and the Expanded Rural
Electrification Program Team, on the other, for a doable
and definite implementation plan for 100-percent
barangay electrification, total electrification of the
country is possible before 2010.
Providing electricity to every household in the country
is actually one of the Arroyo administration’s 10-point
propoor agenda. In the first Energy Summit in January
this year, Mrs. Arroyo vowed to light up all barangays
in 2009, especially those considered the poorest of the
poor.
The
Expanded Rural Electrification Program seeks to uplift
the lives of the poor, using electricity as the platform
to create employment opportunities in the rural areas
and increase productivity among residents in remote and
off-grid villages.
The DOE
points out that back in 1999, there were about 9,600
unlighted barangays, most of them in the remote
municipalities or islands. But as a result of
partnerships and collaborations, these barangays are
slowly but steadily being linked to the national
electricity grid, thus giving them the opportunity to
accelerate their economic and social development through
better access to news and information, as well as new
technology.
But
there’s bad news. The electrification of the rural areas
is threatened, ironically, by forces who say they want
to deliver the poor from poverty.
We’re
talking of the communist-led New People’s Army (NPA),
which recently launched armed attacks on a French
government-funded rural electrification program in
Masbate province.
The
project is the P1.1-billion Philippine Rural
Electrification Service (PRES) that is being implemented
by the Paris-Manila Technology Corp. (Pamatec), a
private firm whose president, Hubert d’Aboville, as
concurrent head of the European Chamber of Commerce,
recently appeared before the Senate and received a
severe tongue-lashing from several senators for
“meddling” in our internal affairs.
Here’s
Mr. d’Aboville’s side, according to a BusinessMirror
report: This is a development project between the French
and Philippine governments and is not a
business-to-business project. Pamatec is not selling
equipment but installing solar-power equipment in some
18,000 households, with the cost paid for by the French
government. By the end of the month, Pamatec should have
reached close to 4,000 households installed with solar
panels. They should have installed solar panels in
18,000 households in Masbate and completed the project
by August next year.
PRES
came into the picture because households in Masbate were
using candles, Petromax or even renting bulbs for P5 a
day, and spending about P350 a month just to have light.
With the PRES project, the people will be spending less
than half or P150 a month. The project is financed
through official development assistance from the French
government, of which 55 percent is in the form of a
grant.
But the
electrification project has been forced to grind to a
halt because of recent attacks by armed men, believed to
be NPA rebels, who destroyed P10 million worth of
equipment. According to d’Aboville, people claiming to
be NPA members sent them letters asking for a share of
the PRES project.
In other
words, the French project was being forced to give
“revolutionary tax” to the NPA, and, failing to do so,
had been subjected to punitive action. D’Aboville
contends that PRES, being a government-to-government
project, cannot give in to the NPA demand. Besides, even
if they could, they would still not do so simply because
they believe the project “would help uplift the quality
of life of the poorest of the poor in Masbate.”
That
leads us to this question: If the NPA claims to fight
for the poor, why is it targeting development projects
such as this?
“We are
committed to complete this project, but we need help
from everybody to complete the job. We need the help of
the people from the national to the local government and
even up to the barangay level. We need people to run and
sweat with us, and we even urge the NPA to put down
their guns and help us bring the project to fruition,”
d’Aboville said.
This
looks a perfectly valid point. It is hard to see how a
solar-power project could conceivably be antipeople and
counterrevolutionary to deserve heavy-handed treatment
by NPA guerrillas. Given previous attacks by the NPA on
bus lines, mining companies and telecommunications firms
operating in the countryside, it looks like the rebel
group disdains any government or private-sector
development initiative that runs counter to its concept
of “protracted people’s war,” even if these projects
provide concrete benefits, such as electricity in rural
households.
Does the
National Democratic Front and its armed component, the
NPA, really want to keep the people in the Philippine
countryside in the dark, in the literal sense? If they
do, perhaps they ought to revisit their Leninist
textbooks, because that’s where they will find this gem
of an insight from the leader of the 1917 Russian
revolution: “Only when the country is electrified, when
industry, agriculture and transport are placed on a
technical basis of large-scale production, only then
will our victory be complete.” |
