700 kids benefit from SN Aboitiz gift packs

BOKOD, Benguet - About 700 young lives were touched by a simple gesture of gift giving when SN Aboitiz Power (SNAP) Group distributed a school pack for its host schools in Benguet, Isabela and Ifugao provinces where their power plants are located during the Valentine’s weekend.

Some 420 school children of Planas Elementary School in Ramon, Isabela and 193 pupils from Namnama Elementary School in Alfonso Lista, Ifugao received a reusable cloth bag, slippers and school materials which the pupils could use until the end of classes this schoolyear.

The schools are within host communities of SNAP-Magat, Inc., which owns and operates the 360-megawatt (MW) Magat hydroelectric power plant (HEPP) located at the border of Ramon, Isabela and Alfonso Lista, Ifugao.

In Barangay Ambuklao, Bokod, Benguet, 38 school children of Banao Elementary and 22 students from Adonot Elementary School also received similar gift packages along with 55 pupils from Camangaan Elementary and Tikey Primary schools in Barangay Tikey, Bokod.

The schools are located in host communities of the 105-megawatt Ambuklao Hydroelectric Power Plant (HEPP) and 100-MW Binga HEPP of SNAP-Benguet, Inc. Lawyer Mike Hosillos, SNAP vice president for corporate services, said the gift giving is part of the company’s overall corporate social responsibility to the host communities of their power plants so that they people will be able to feel their presence, especially in assisting the communities improve the living condition of the people living in the said places.

“We want the people in our host communities to continuously feel our presence through the provision of various interventions under our corporate social responsibility projects. We have to sustain our interventions because they are our partners in our business,” Hosillos said.

Aside from the gift giving activity, SNAP officials oriented the schoolchildren on environmental preservation and protection activities which must be done in their communities in order to sustain the forest cover of watersheds that provide abundant supply of water used by the power plants in generating substantial supply of power that will be infused to the Luzon grid.

The 105-megawatt Ambuclao power plant is now in full operation and currently supplying power to the Wholesale Electricity Spot Market (WESM) while two out of the four units of the Binga hydroelectric power plant had already been commissioned and the remaining two units are expected to be operational by 2014.

Hosillos explained there is a need to sustain the forest cover of the watersheds surrounding the three power plants in order to sustain consistent power generation for the benefit of achieving energy self sufficiency that will be infused to the Luzon grid.

Because of the need for the operation of more power plants in order to meet the rapidly growing demand for power as a result of rapid urbanization, Hosillos said the full operation of the three power generating plants will help address the narrowing gap between the supply and demand so that the impending power crisis will be averted.

SNP Benguet won the right to operate the Ambuclao and Binga power plants following its $325 million bid when the same was subjected to public bidding by the National Power Corporation (NPC) several years ago.