Cooperative energizes 77% of Benguet sitios

By ALDWIN QUITASOL
www.nordis.net

BAGUIO CITY — Benguet Electric Cooperative (Beneco) Engineering Department manager Melchor Licoben announced during the Kapihan at the regional office of the Philippine Information Agency (PIA) that 23% of the total number of sitios of Benguet province are yet to be included in its sitio energization program.

Licoben said that 77% or around 154 sitios benefitted from 2012 to first quarter of 2013 since Beneco was given a P130 million funding from the National Electrification Administration (NEA) . The actual utilization of the fund he said was on the year 2012 as Beneco was not included in the first release of funds in the last quarter of 2011.

President Benigno Aquino III approved the sitio electrification program on 2011 targetting a 100% coverage of every sitios in the country by 2015 and achieve a 90% elctrification of households all over the country by 2017. In his oath of office in 2010, he committed that the remaining 36,000 un-energized sitios will soon have electricty under his term. He also approved a funding of at least P2 billion annualy for program.

According to Licoben, an amount of P160 million is still needed to bring electricity to the remaining un-energized sitios.

He said that P700,000 is needed to energize one sitio. He added that the cost of bringing electricity to a single household is around P7,000. He said that compated to other locations in the rest of the country, Benguet sitios lie on mountainous areas. He explained that longer wires are used aside from their complicated transportation because if the accessibility situations of Benguet sitios.

Beneco general manager Gerardo Versoza said that eversince though, the electric firm for years has been spending millions of pesos just to energize remote areas of the province. He said they are doing this even if it will mean 50 to even a century of waiting for the return of investment for the cooperative. # nordis.net