THIS Holy Week, we hold our sixth session of the Prayer and Life Workshop. In the fifth session, the participants are reminded that God does not manifest His will to advise them by saying “This is My Will.”
In fact, Christians realize of God’s plan for them by looking at their past that we can distinguish God’s will and plan for us.
Then the participants are told that when they felt frightened, annoyed or aggravated, they should discern whether they should find a solution to the situation to peacefully try to attain it. Otherwise, when there’s no solution, or out of their hands, they should surrender into His hands, by praying “Thy will be done.”
In Bacolod, local residents are annoyed or aggravated with frequent brownouts or water shortages. Recently, Globe had a two-day outage of internet and landline connection.
But the electric power supply is so erratic. Last Monday, I failed to submit a column because of the whole brownout. And when there’s a brownout, Bacolod City Water District (Baciwa) will have a fine excuse not to provide us with water.
Talk about triple whammies. No internet, electricity, and water. And here in Bacolod, supposedly the country’s most liveable urban center.
I’m sure it wasn’t God’s will that Bacoleños suffer from these aggravations, otherwise known as force majeure.
Central Negros Electric Cooperative (Ceneco), Baciwa, and even Globe, have responsibilities and obligations to provide Bacoleños -- and Metro Bacolod -- with these services.
If you ask Baciwa for reasons why we in Alijis have no water for 18 hours, their engineers and customer relations pass their obligations to the Almighty.
How many times to get these advisories informing its consumers that, maintenance activities will be conducted...to ensure stability of distribution lines to avoid further serious damages that will result to major interruptions. These are human-made interruptions, not force majeure.
With Baciwa, they’re not doing enough to ensure water availability. Unlike private companies that have marketing feedback mechanisms, they get returns on investments from somewhere else.
As a public utility, the whole Baciwa staff get paid their salaries and benefits regardless of their performances. No wonder, no one wants to privatize the utility.
Why should they? As a state-owned entity, their salaries, benefits and other perks are guaranteed not by profits but from state subsidies.
Now my internet connection is back. After all, Globe is a private entity. They either deliver their services or they lose their market base from whence come their revenues.
With Ceneco and Baciwa, can we expect to surrender these human-made aggravations to God? No way.
(bqsanc@yahoo.com)