Negros Occidental Governor Eugenio Jose Lacson is hoping that the National Grind Corporation of the Philippines (NGCP) would improve the power situation, especially in the province.
"We hope for lesser brownouts and blackouts," Lacson said, as he cited the statement issued by NGCP that power connectivity for Cebu-Negros-Panay grid would be completed by the end of this month.
"Hoping it would be finished by the end of the month. We trust our Department of Energy to know the real situation and advise especially NGCP what they wanna do," Lacson said.
However, he said, NGCP as a power distributor should not be totally blamed because it's dependent on power supply.
On March 1, a power outage hit residents of Negros Occidental and Panay.
NGCP in an advisory said they monitored the unplanned shutdown of PEDC Units 1,2, and 3 (316MW) on March 1.
The unavailability of all PEDC units and the maintenance shutdown PCPC (135MW) until March 30 led to the partial blackout in Panay. Customers in Negros and Panay are affected, NGCP explained.*