BAGUIO CITY August 16 – The local government is open to whatever offer from the Benguet Electric Cooperative (BENECO) for the operation and maintenance of the city-owned Asin minihydro power plants.
However, Mayor Mauricio G. Domogan underscored that the local government still needs to address the award it issued to Kaltimex Energy Philippines, the winning bidder of the proposed rehabilitation and upgrading of the renewable energy plants, where the notice to proceed was already issued earlier but no development work has yet been undertaken by the company over the said plants.
“We are open to the offer of BENECO to operate and maintain the city-owned Asin minihydro plants through whatever procedures applicable but we have to first contend with the issues confronting the issuance of the notice to proceed issued to Kaltimex, the declared winning bidder for the project, before we can start entertaining other available options,” Domogan said.
He admitted that Kaltimex had been requesting the local government to delay the effectivity of the notice to proceed, considering the presence of numerous issues and concerns they are encountering in the implementation of the multi-million project which the local government initially granted.
According to him, the non-operation of the Asin minihydro power plants and its failure to be rehabilitated the soonest has resulted in millions of pesos in supposed income that the local government could have used for priority development projects in the city’s various barangays.
Domogan claimed that from the start the local government had been open to whatever offer BENECO gave in relation to electrification programs and projects and in the matter of the operation and maintenance of the Asin minihydro power plants. The previous members of the board of directors had a different position on the matter, coupled with the stand of the city’s Special Bids and Awards Committee (SBAC) that disqualified BENECO from being a bidder because it was not registered with the Cooperative Development Authority (CDA) as a full pledged cooperative.
Earlier, BENECO management claimed that the local government can earn as much as P1 per kilowatt-hour once the Asin minihydro power plants will be operated and managed by the electric cooperative, aside from ensuring cheap and reliable power for its consumers in the future.
The local government is working out the possible confiscation of the P150 million performance bond posted by Kaltimex for the implementation of the P540 million rehabilitation and upgrading of the city-owned power plants once it will not be able to prosecute the project within a 6-month period, as enshrined in the memorandum of agreement signed between both parties.
Baguio City is the only local government in the country that owns renewable energy plants, particularly the Asin minihydro power plants that were built during the American regime in the country.**By Dexter A. See
