Power stripping

DOWN here in my barangay, all the guys know—rather instinctively—not to mess with electricity lines, because, one, they can kill you, and, two, they are vulnerable to “tripping.”

The same common sense is not practiced in Mindanao, apparently, at least based on the grumbling of National Grid Corporation of the Philippines, or NGCP, operator of the power transmission network in the entire country.

The Inquirer reported last week that NGCP already begged the government for help in dealing with certain land “claimants” in the Lanao provinces.

It seemed that NGCP had “right of way” issues over the vital transmission lines in those provinces. (Well, they only transmitted the electricity from the Agus hydroelectric plants to the rest of the brownout-plagued Mindanao.)

According news reports, the land “claimants” deliberately planted fast-growing trees directly under the transmission lines, even following long stretches of the wires like a shadow.

This newspaper in fact put out a photograph last week, showing some fast growing tree species under the power wires, with the rest of the area looking like a desert, stark naked of any form of vegetation.

Really—the trees under the electricity wires were so precisely lined up, with an even width along the entire stretch, that they looked even straighter than the bowling alley or something.

And why would anybody intentionally plant those trees, despite the threat to electricity service in the entire Mindanao grid? La lang, power trip? Well, simple, and they just wanted to strip NGCP of fantastic sums of pesos.

One of the “claimants” reportedly demanded from the company a booming P6-million payment. To cut down the trees? No, sir, not to cut them down but just for NGCP to trim them on top!

Down here in my barangay, the guys would normally see the personnel of Meralco, riding their boom cranes to trim the upper portion of trees that could possibly disturb the electricity lines.

To think, the Meralco crew need not even ask permission from the homeowners; the guys down here would just accept the operation as plain necessary.

But then again NGCP must deal with “claimants” that were not even titled owners of the land somewhere in far flung mountainous areas known as no-man’s land.

And so NGCP figured that it must run to the Department of Energy, or DOE, to do something about the problem. For one, if the government would just sit idly by, the problem could worsen the power crisis in Mindanao.

In fact, NGCP reported to the DOE that the supposed “vegetation” under those transmission lines actually caused the “tripping” last month of the two key lines called “Baloi-Agus” in Lanao.

Now, NGCP did not even own the transmission lines, because those were still owned by the government company called Transco.

Still, NGCP warned that the incident could lead to indefinite interruption of the operation of the 180-megawatt Agus-4 hydro plant. In short, big problem, boss!

From what I gathered, because the lines were located in rather remote areas, NGCP was able to restore service in only one of the two critical lines.

Moreover, I found out that, to restore the service on that one line, NGCP actually negotiated with the “claimant” on the payment to cut down the neatly arranged trees underneath.

It seemed that the position of NGCP was bordering on desperation, because its payment would be a precedent for the other extortionists in Mindanao.

What would happen to us, say, if NGCP would have to give in to every devious “claimant” in the country?

Well, NGCP would have to pass on the “ransom” to the public, and you—ladies and gentlemen of the tax paying public—would have to shoulder the additional costs.

Or perhaps the government would have to subsidize NGCP, which in the end would also mean that you and nobody but you would have to shoulder the cost.

A couple of months ago, the 80-year-old philanthropic government agency PCSO lost an arbitration case filed by one of its suppliers, the publicly listed DFFN, formerly Diversified Financial Network, Inc.

The order was for PCSO to pay DFFN some P27 million in liquidated damages.

Now, based on info from the Philippine Stock Exchange, DFNN was not happy with the P27-million arbitration award.

In fact, the company went to court again, this time asking for P310 million in damages, citing provisions in its contract with the PCSO as the basis for its higher claim, which the arbitration panel supposedly failed to consider in its ruling.

In effect, DFFN claimed in the new case that the arbitration ruling excluded penalty charges specified in the contract.

In 2003, PCSO hired the company to provide the equipment, under a lease agreement, for its lotto operation on mobile devices such as cell phones.

Two years later in 2005, PCSO cancelled the contract, leading DFFN to file for damages with the arbitration panel. Only 10 years later last May, the panel finally ruled in favor of DFFN.

But the thing was, well, PCSO already sought the advice of the OGCC (Office of the Government Corporate Counsel), which told PCSO that it would be wise for PCSO to settle the cases with DFFN.

Before the arbitration ruling came out, DFFN proposed to PCSO a compromise agreement, which the OGCC believed could be favorable to PCSO. For one, as the OGCC noted, DFFN already acceded to the changes wanted by PCSO in the proposal.

In other words, there were signs that PCSO could even soften the stand of DFFN some more somewhat, through an amicable settlement in the arbitration case.

Lo and behold, PCSO threw away the OGCC advice, based on a resolution of the PCSO to drop the DFFN proposal for compromise agreement.

The board thus simply exposed the charity institution to bigger liabilities, what with the arbitration award of P27 that DFFN even wanted to go up to P310 million.

Moreover, while PCSO continued to battle with DFFN, it could not go into business with other suppliers because of the “exclusivity clause” in the contested contract with DFFN.

Word has been going around that certain PCSO officials and board members earlier got some, well, er, “guidance” from other companies salivating over the online lotto of the PCSO that DFNN operated.

And so PCSO had to stop the online operations, which meant the office did not earn from it in the past 10 years or so already.

By the way, PCSO revenues have also been rather stagnant of late.