Mayor Beng Climaco has declined to judge the performance of Crown Investment Holdings, Inc. and Desco Inc. as investor-manager of the Zamboanga City Electric Cooperative (Zamcelco), stressing that what is important they must provide the city with uninterrupted electricity on a 24/7 basis.

“It is very premature to describe them. Definitely, what we all aspire for is that we will have 24-hour electricity at an affordable cost,” Climaco said in response to a question fielded by a reporter during Monday’s press briefing in City Hall.

She stressed that now is not the time to judge them (Crown/Desco) because they were just taking over Zamcelco from years of mismanagement.

“I think in every opportunity, we really have to support our electric cooperative in good times and bad times. But this is very clear and the message is very clear that the people of Zamboanga, particularly the member-consumers should be provided with 24-hour continuous and affordable electricity,” Climaco said.

To recall, the debt-ridden Zamcelco awarded the contract to take over its operations to the joint venture of Crown and Desco sometime in October last year to resolve its financial problems, which resulted in series of outages and rotational blackouts.

The mayor believed that taking over Zamcelco from years of mismanagement was going to be a very big challenge and “we will have to really stand by the commitment (investment management contract) that they have signed.

Nonetheless, she said there is no problem now of the power supply. “There is enough supply, however, what we are experiencing are the intermittent outages due to voltage fluctuations that should be addressed.”

According to her, the voltage fluctuations have to be addressed by the National Grid Corporation of the Philippines (NGCP), being the main power transmission network. (Vic Larato) (file photo: Kathy Wee Sit)