The vision to make the Zamboanga City Electric Cooperative (Zamcelco) a world class power utility is a work in progress, according to its investment management Crown/Desco.

Atty. Lorenzo Reyes, legal counsel for Crown/Desco, told the press briefing last Monday that the utility’s engineer is in India right now inspecting the deal for transformers that will be installed in all substations.

He said replacing old facilities is a massive project undertaken by Crown, costing around P5 million to modernize the utility’s transformers, distribution lines and meters.

“We have to do this because we would like to be in synch with the vision of our mayor (Beng Climaco) to make Zamboanga a world class city,” Atty. Reyes said. “How can Zamboanga be a world class city if its power is not efficient?” he added in a statement.

Reyes appealed to Zamcelco’s power consumers to bear with Crown/Desco during these times of voltage fluctuations and outages due to technical problems.

“Give us a year. I’m sure Zamboanga will be a world class city in a year’s time. Our facility will be okay by then. Just help us in preventing some anomalous transactions,” he stressed, adding that there are misbehavior elements in “our society, especially along the coast, trying to steal power from Zamcelco thus resulting in a system’s loss.

Reyes further said when Crown took over Zamcelco the system’s loss was pegged at 23% equivalent to around P69 million a month.

He likewise apologized for the unannounced power outage Monday dawn, explaining that just like any machines, Zamcelco’s sunstation in Putik had snapped or tripped off mainly due to effective distributions lines and/or the power load from the source.

“That’s the reason why Crown is here to rehabilitate the lines, transformers and meters, onward to making Zamcelco a world class utility,” Reyes added.-(Vic Larato)