The increase in power rates by distribution utilities that either operate standby power generation facilities or are buying electricity from other producers for their “peaking requirement” is not “across the board”, a director of the Mindanao Development Authority (MinDA) said.
“The Department of Energy and the Energy Regulatory Commission are useless when it comes to defending the interests and welfare of the Filipino people. In fact, these government agencies are merely being used by power companies to defend their rate hikes,” the militant group, Bayan, said in a statement emailed to news organizations.
Theater actress and activist Monique Wilson took the cudgels of some 700 small vendors who were fighting against an eviction.
A partylist lawmaker said they “fear” that the island-wide Mindanao blackout early morning today “will once again be used by the Aquino government to once again project a phantom power crisis and push or fast tract the privatization of the remaining government power assets like the Agus-Pulangi power complex.”
Costs remain steep for kidney patients such as Alfredo, a 61-year old farmer who was brought by his family all the way from Tulunan, North Cotabato to a private hospital in Davao.