There is no doubt that the flood of complaints against the Negros Electric and Power Corporation are valid to the core. So valid in fact that consumers easily forgot two important things: that NEPC is not yet officially the distribution utility and the distribution system is officially the old one practically neglected by the Central Negros Electric Cooperative for more than 50 years due to lack of money – capital expenditures as it is called.
There is no doubt that NEPC has faced a publicity nightmare, a public relations bangungot amid a savage public made twice vicious by Facebook, over the recent conking out of the CENECO’s old Alijis Substation.
NEPC should remember, as I suppose it knows fully well, that consumers are the reason it exists, the raison d’ etre why it has come here as a distribution utility whose business is imbued with public interest.
It is difficult to reason with consumers who have bathed in sweat after having no electricity for 24 hours or those who have fought battles with mosquitoes or those who have lost sleep as their babies wailed or even those who have lost their battles in online games as their mobile phones lost power.
Seriously.
All that NEPC can do now is to bring back power to those covered by the Alijis Substation and ensure that the power outage would not happen again and for that long.
But can it?
Then again, like a mayor who has just won the polls, NEPC should remember it is bound to serve all within its franchise – from the pleased to the disgusted, to the well wisher and naysayer, to the young employee and the young bum, to the rich and the poor.
I am aware as a consumer that inconvenience is the twin of better service, part of the birthing pains like an infant violently getting out of its mother.
Or as Carl Jung would describe it, The Shadow of the self.
It is important to note that since last year, NEPC and CENECO have announced that facilities of the CENECO system are waiting to fail, like the invented Walt Disney story of lemmings lining up to jump off a cliff.
Many of these facilities, not the lemmings, are old, Walt Disney old and, as expected, have to go his way.
The Alijis Substation was the first to go and it was inevitable. Inconvenient.
That was certainly not the last.
It is a fact that CENECO was not able to rehabilitate its distribution system – from substations to feeders to transformers and yes, even the power lines – for more than 50 years.
The reason: no money for its capital expenditures that the National Electrification Administration keeps a close watch over more than the Commission on Audit keeps a keen eye on government funds.
NEPC, through the Joint Venture Agreement approved by CENECO consumers through a plebiscite and supported by local officials led by Mayor Albee has the money to do it – at least P2 billion in total spread over the next five years.
Which means that the rehabilitation of the distribution system is necessary, a crucial service that NEPC must perform as part of its obligations spelled out in the joint venture agreement.
It must if it is committed to improving service, to ensure that the 25 years of its franchise’s life would mean, as it claims, “more” and better services for consumers.
I, as a residential and industrial consumer, have long accepted that there will be short-term (hopefully) inconveniences, or pains, simply put, if I am to expect better long-term (hopefully) services with the entry of NEPC.
These are expected collaterals or as Denzel Washington said in the The Equalizer: when you pray for rain you gotta deal with the mud.
It cannot do otherwise.
Or it can freeze and choose the safe public relations route of not doing repairs with no brownouts amid public criticisms, mostly valid, some apparently orchestrated by the political opposition, some apparently belonging to traditional ones out of power, others belonging to desperate Communists who are quickly losing relevance.
