Last night a number of neighborhoods in Bacolod City were in complete darkness, not because of a problem with electrical supply but as many people have been discussing is a result of City Hall padlocking the administration building of Central Negros Electric Cooperative (CENECO).
Turns out CENECO had cut the power to City Hall because of the latter’s failure to pay electricity bills amounting to nearly P5 million pesos.
In a tit-for-tat move, City Hall issued a closure order because of CENECO’s failure to pay their taxes.
Note-worthy enough in the above link, the City Legal Officer said:
Only the Administrative Department (of Ceneco) will be padlocked, the power connection to all commercial establishments (in the city) will not be affected because the maintenance and operation sections are not covered in the closure order
Seriously?!
So why did we have a brownout lasting 10 hours?
Calls made to the CENECO hotline 1621 all had similar answers – power lines were sparking or there were problems with connections which the maintenance crew could not get to because all their materials were locked in the admin building. Are you kidding me?!
These two entities are acting like temper-tantrum throwing 5 year olds. You wouldn’t think that they provide vital services to the city with they way that they’re behaving. This is no way to conduct business and only serves to put a black eye on Bacolod. I wouldn’t expect this behavior from a city that claims to be “a city of the world”.
For shame folks. For shame.
Talk about us man. We are in 16 hours of time without any electricity. And it does feel any good. We pay our bill on time.