CEBU CITY, Philippines — By 2022, most, if not all, households in Cebu province will have access to electricity.
This is the target of the Department of Energy in Central Visayas (DOE-7) as it committed to focus on “lighting up” 10 sitios every month until the remaining 343 sitios of the province that have no electricity will have electric power by then.
Lawyer Russ Mark Gamallo, DOE-7 legal officer, said completing the electrification of all unserved and underserved communities within the next three years would be part of the agency’s National Intensification of Households Electrification (NIHE) program.
Gamallo said DOE Central Office had created a task force since 2018 that would focus on providing access to electricity for all communities.
In Cebu, DOE-7 committed to the provincial government to electrify at least 10 sitios every month. Based on the records of the DOE-7, some 343 sitios out of the province’s 8,212 sitios do not have access to electricity.
Gamallo said they would be working with electricity distribution companies in order to expedite the implementation of the electrification program.
“Amo ni i-relay sa mga [electric] cooperatives, and we still have to meet them in order for them to know the direction of the province. We will also intensify and focus our efforts on our electrification projects. We need to start the soonest,” Gamallo said in a separate interview with CDN Digital.
Under the NIHE program, DOE will be shouldering the connection cost for the indigent unserved or underserved communities.
In a recent meeting with town and city mayors with Cebu Governor Gwendolyn Garcia, Gamallo asked the local chief executives to submit an updated list of their unelectrified sitios.
The provincial government has also encouraged DOE-7 to pursue their target to light up all the province’s sitios by offering the agency the continued use of a portion of the Balili property in Naga City as an impounding area for the illegally refilled butane canisters that the agency had confiscated./dbs