“WHY would we?”

The question was asked by Jojit Yap, president of the Central Negros Electric Cooperative (Ceneco), Sunday, October 16, 2022, amid speculations that the firm is trying to sabotage the celebration of MassKara Festival in Bacolod City.

This was after massive power outages occurred over the weekend following the explosion at Ceneco’s Reclamation feeder in the city’s Barangay 35 on Saturday.

“What the consumers and other people do not know was, Ceneco incurred damages because of what happened to our sub-feeder,” Yap said, adding that they are yet to determine the exact amount of losses they had because of the incident.

Past midnight on Saturday, a leakage occurred at the distribution line of Ceneco’s reclamation area feeder. The cause of the incident was not yet determined, a statement from Ceneco said.

It added that the automatic tripping function of the feeder’s “recloser,” or the automatic, high-voltage electric switch that shuts off electric power when trouble happens, failed to activate.

“As such, instead of preventing the problem, it caused more trouble and even triggered the electrical cables at the recloser to catch fire,” Ceneco’s statement reads.

As of Sunday, Yap said they have started to return the power supply in most of Ceneco’s coverage while the Reclamation feeder is also being fixed.

An automatic trip-off due to the activation of protective equipment also happened at the Bacolod-Silay 69kV line that caused power outages to portions of Silay and Talisay cities over the weekend.

Yap said these incidents were inevitable and were not planned to sabotage the MassKara Festival.

The members of the board are set to meet Monday, October 17, for the creation of a task force that will ensure uninterrupted power supply, especially on the highlights of the MassKara Festival.

“We have done that during the time of former Mayor Evelio Leonardia and we will do it again,” Yap said.

Ceneco intends to assign crewmen at the various festival sites to respond immediately if there will be power interruptions.