Solon cites need to rehabilitate electric co-op in Zamboanga City

By Manila Standard Business – July 30, 2018

The continued financial decline of Zamboanga City Electric Cooperative can lead to outages which will adversely affect its residents and business.

Zamboanga City Rep. Celso Lobregat made the assessment amid reports that the city would face possible power outages if Zamcelco failed to pay its debt to power suppliers.

Lobregat is now calling for a more deliberate intervention from the government to ensure the rehabilitation of the cooperative.

“Actually, the problem is worsening because the system loss is not going down and not improving. Last month, Zamcelco’s power supply was almost cut off because it couldn’t pay its suppliers in time,” he said.

Zamcelco reportedly owes its suppliers some P2 billion which accumulated through the years.

Lobregat asked the National Electrification Administration to intervene and look for a company which could be awarded an investment management contract to ensure the complete rehabilitation of the cooperative.

“I believe NEA should come in already because it would be a long process. The NEA should come in and maybe NEA should be the one to handle the bidding process,” he said.

Zamcelco earlier called for a rebidding of the IMC after Meralco-Comstech backed out of the contract amid concerns over a lower system loss cap that will require additional investment.

Lobregat warned that awarding the IMC to the wrong company would only worsen Zamcelco’s delivery of service.

“What is important to me is that the contract is awarded to a company that has experience in power distribution and will not treat the process as an experiment to lower or manage the system loss,” he said.

“The qualified bidder should not only have the financial backing, financial expertise but the technical expertise and track record as well,” he said.