Friday, July 25, 2008 Pangan: CNG, cooperatives at iba pa By Benjie R. Pangan At Close Range
I CAUGHT an interesting item in one of the broadsheets and it dealt with India's experience on compressed natural gas or CNG for all its public buses, taxis and auto rickshaws plying New Delhi's congested roads.
It is bruited about that CNG fuel costs less and is reportedly cleaner than diesel and gasoline. Ows, talaga?
From this shift, huge savings were reportedly obtained by drivers and owners of the PUVs since by their computations, a kilogram of CNG costs just a third of a liter of gasoline and half of the cost of diesel (!). Besides, the hardcore environmentalists have heaped praises for this discovery: the use of CNG has allegedly resulted in significant benefits to the environment and to the health of New Delhi's residents.
Learning from others is not that harmful. On the contrary, it enriches our pool of experiences and exposure and makes us flexible to change.
Note that India has the second largest density of population, next of course, to China with over a billion people. And yet, India is struggling to keep its demographic programs vibrant and dynamic, in order to sustain its burgeoning population rate.
From this actual situation, we can learn much in order to innovate and improve on our programs involving population and other allied concerns.
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Some of us may have read the feature on the island barangay of Pangan-an off Lapu Lapu City where electricity is provided by solar power courtesy of the Pagan-an Island Cooperative for Community Development which operates the solar complex via 504 panels generating 90 watts each.
As reported, the complex which was funded by the Belgian government with the cooperation of the Department of Energy (DOE), started operations in December 1998 and has since been providing power to 230 households on the island. The DOE taught the residents how to operate the facility and call on the experts in case of technical problems.
This case study may only be one of several innovations set up in order to find alternatives to costly electric power generated by electric power facilities, cooperatives and IPPs or independent power producers. Some good lessons on practical approaches can be learned, emulated and replicated by us here in Luzon.
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Now that times are harsh and hard, it may be timely to go back to basics, tend to agricultural activities, enhance cooperativism, self-help and the SMEs or small-medium enterprises. We should bond together closely in order to survive nightmares of our daily existence, remembering all too well that very basic, overused but still relevant slogan: United we stand, divided we fall and All for one and one for all.
While on the topic of SMEs, I would be encouraged to mention the national government's SME Unified Lending Opportunities for National Growth (Sulong) program which has so far granted a total of P132.2 billion (repeat, billion) in loans to 86,975 micro, small and medium enterprises since 2004. Now that the Magna Carta for SMEs has been properly set including the guidelines for availing of the financial assistance offered, I hope more SMEs could avail themselves of the bridging support.
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"Greening" of SCTEx starts. Yesterday, the BCDA has launched the planting of 2,000 narra trees along the Clark North B interchange in Barangay Dolores, Mabalacat and will continue to plant 20,000 trees on the 94-kilometer toll road in the following years. This grand project will please several environmentalists and plain nature preservation adherents. I may suggest that idle lands on both sides of SCTEx be planted to crops to be tended by residents in the area and when harvested, proceeds of the sale be divided equally between the tillers and the local government unit.
