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Wednesday, August 23, 2006
Sabotage eyed in toppling of power towers
CAGAYAN DE ORO CITY -- Sabotage was eyed as the motive behind the toppling of five steel towers of the Transmission Corp. (Transco) located near the Montalvan farm in Barangay Butong, Quezon town in Bukidnon province.
"Well, it's so clear that sabotage is the motive because they broke the volts and clamps," Transco public information officer Raffy Magbanua said.
The toppling of the five steel 69 KV towers cut off power to more than half of Bukidnon province, including the cities of Valencia and Malaybalay, since Monday afternoon.
Magbanua earlier said they expected electricity to be restored to the areas by late Tuesday afternoon.
He said later in a radio interview that they were able to restore power to the area at around 6:30 a.m. Tuesday. The power corporation assigned five line teams consisting of seven lines personnel each and augmented by two more lines team from Cagayan de Oro to work on the problem.
Magbanua said it is likely that a large, heavily equipped group was behind the sabotage since it would take considerable effort to topple the five towers.
Transco has yet to identify the people behind the sabotage and said an investigation is ongoing.
Magbanua said they have received several threats but that they did not get any demands for protection money.
"We are not pinpointing anybody but from what I've read in the papers and in the media, Quezon town in Bukidnon is a hotbed for communist insurgency," Magbanua said.
He said they are undertaking preventive measures to prevent a repeat of the incident especially now that the fiestas of the cities of Valencia and Cagayan de Oro are drawing near.
"It's hard for us to keep an eye on all 3,000 steel towers located in Mindanao. Our inspection teams conduct the monitoring on a periodic basis and we also ask help from the military to secure these towers and we hold meetings with them for this purpose," Magbanua said.
The incident marked the second time that a major blackout occurred in Mindanao for this decade. In 2003, several Napocor towers were knocked out by suspected rebel groups in response to government's all out war on terrorism.
The 2003 power outage affected the cities of Cagayan de Oro, Iligan, and most of Misamis Oriental and Region 10. Power was restored the day after the incident, which paved the way for local officials to pursue an on-air radio dialogue with the communist New People's Army and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front. (Stephen Capillas/With a report from Sun.Star SuperBalita)
(August 23, 2006 issue)
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