As the Islamic fasting month of Ramadhan approaches, thousands of residents in many towns of Lanao del Sur, including their local government officials, are making an appeal to their electric cooperative to restore power supply, which they claimed had been out for more than a month now.
Masiding Yahya, a coordinator for Lanao del Sur of the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao’s (ARMM’s) Bureau of Public Information (BPI), described “some local government chief executives” as “beginning to get furious” because “the Lanao del Sur Electric Cooperative (Lasureco) is still unable to energize their towns for more than a month now.”
“In fact, a week ago, it was reported that irate residents of some barangays (villages) in Marantao municipality had cut some electric posts and destroyed electric cables to show their dismay on the inconvenience of the power outage,” Yahya said.
Concerns about the power outage ran high in the coming fasting month of Ramadhan, during which Muslims spend most of the time praying during night time, Yahya said.
Yahya added that “as of press time of Tuesday, village chieftains in Ditsaan Ramain municipality are meeting to do some stern action, too, should Lasureco fail to provide them electricity especially during Ramadhan.”
It was learned that Lasureco linemen cut connections in more than 20 towns of Lanao del Sur because of resident-consumers’ alleged failure to pay their accumulated arrears in power bills last May.
But in his report to the BPI-ARMM, Yahya qouted many village chieftains as claiming to have been “paying what Lasureco demanded from us?”
On the other hand, Lasureco officials retorted that the consumers’ pay-outs were “not proportionate to their electric consumption.”
At their meeting Tuesday, Ditsaan Ramain Municipal Mayor Actar Marmar suggested to his counterparts in other affected areas that each municipality town “pay a flat-rate bill.” (Ali G. Macabalang)
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