DENR’s waste of public funds indefensible

By Herbert Vego

 

WHY is Undersecretary Benny Antiporda of the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) so cocky as to “promise” to resign only if President Duterte asks him to?

It could only be because, like Health Secretary Francisco Duque, he expects Duterte to declare him “clean” of irregularities. Antiporda is DENR’s “defender” in the transformation of a 500-meter stretch of Manila Bay, popular known as Manila Baywalk, into a fake white-sand beach.

As everybody knows it’s not white sand but crushed dolomite or limestone extracted from Cebu.

Poor guy, he must have volunteered to be a willing scapegoat, as if to keep his immediate superior, Secretary Roy Cimatu (a retired military officer), out of the picture.

The job of converting that smelly shoreline into a “tourist-free” tourist spot in the time of COVID is said to have cost the taxpayers a whopping P389 million.

The other day, Antiporda tried to turn offensive by calling scientists from the University of the Philippines (UP) “bayaran” – akin to mercenaries — for receiving multi-million-peso consultation fees for the project.

If the UP people had indeed advised against pushing through with it for being unhealthy and non-feasible, then what’s Antiporda mad about? The scientists are not paid for nothing, and DENR should have heeded their advice!

It was the Geographic Society of the University of the Philippines (UP) that initiated the call for Antiporda’s resignation for disregarding Filipino scientists’ opinion.

As of yesterday – no thanks to typhoon Offel – the white-sand perimeter had turned gray, having mixed with the black sand underneath.

It does not make sense to expanding Manila Baywalk – unless there is a hidden reason. Since it is already a very congested commercial hub, Manila Bay should no longer be reclaimed for tourism purposes.

 

If the DENR would like to be an asset rather than a liability, it should sponsor and encourage profitable endeavors. But it has even failed in its major function of reforesting the bald forests.

 

If our forest cover were adequate and therefore renewable, we could be like New Zealand which makes millions of dollars yearly from exporting thousands of tons of giant logs daily.

 

Today’s generation is unaware that in the 1950s, we had a big, successful lumber producer in Bacolod City, ILCO Lumber. No wonder the houses in that decade were made of lumber posts, floors and walls.

 

Walang DENR noong araw.

 

-oOo-

 

A BAT STORY

WAS it a case of suicide?

Not really. But when a flying bat accidentally hit a power line of MORE Power at barangay Sto. Domingo, Arevalo at 3:08 a.m. yesterday, it fell into its sudden death due to electrocution.

It also resulted in a trip-off. But thanks to an automatic recloser, the brownout lasted 40 minutes and affected only a small section of the barangay. Without that newly-acquired recloser installed on Quezon St., all areas serviced by Molo feeder 5 could have blacked out.

Wherever a circuit breaker shuts off until manually reset, the recloser automatically tests the electrical line to determine whether the trouble has been removed. If the problem is only temporary, the recloser automatically resets itself and restores the electric power.

Unscheduled brownouts caused by short-circuits, as in the above bat tale, have been minimized. It is now hard for saboteurs to stretch their luck without getting caught.

Scheduled brownouts would even be rarer because MORE technicians have done day-long preventive maintenance in each of the five substations – Jaro, LaPaz, City Proper, Molo, and Mandurriao — “inherited” from Panay Electric Co. (PECO).”

Rehab activities indeed entail short brownouts. But they are inevitable to upgrade the obsolete facilities and prevent trip-offs and accidental fires.

Well, indeed, it is no joke that MORE Power has absorbed all 65,000 customers of PECO. And with an expected 30,000 more to be “legalized” – those who used to be power pilferers – the only way to serve them all is to “modernize”.

“With all the substations now running at maximum efficiency,” MORE President Roel Z. Castro told us, “emergency repairs would be greatly reduced. However, since four of these substations now run on 90 percent of their maximum instead of the ideal 70 to 80 percent, we would have to add at least three more substations.”

A mobile substation has just been installed in Mandurriao for the exclusive use of the commercial area at Megaworld.

With billionaire Enrique K. Razon at the helm as chairman of MORE Electric and Power Corp., wala rason nga indi magsiga ang bug-os nga dakbanwang Iloilo.