Why Asin should own hydro-electric plants

LIGHT AT THE END OF THE TUNNEL

Roger D. Sinot

ASIN HOT SPRINGS, Tuba, Benguet  – Questions baffle not only the poor but the middle income earners. It is painful for them when Napoles episodes like tele-novelas reveal of government savings that become wasted money through the Disbursement Acceleration Program.

When government can afford to play Santa Claus by giving away millions or billions of pesos to a favored few, how come our people suffer from joblessness, expensive food, shelter, medical care, education, transportation, fuel, and costly power and unstable electric supply? All these are lifeline needs that government is duty bound to provide, maybe not for free but at reasonable costs, at least. This may be one reason why OFWs prefer to stay even in war-torn Libya. They say, “we have better chances of surviving here than in the Philippines.”

In social media in nearby Baguio City, local public officials are being criticized for their chaotic and environmentally unsustainable urban designs. They make work programs that allow the pouring of cement on every inch of the ground without considering the sentiments of their constituents. Also, for someone’s advantage in an eco-tourism project, a number of trees that is enough to send someone to jail, were cut.

They are even planning to build a multimillion-peso huge concrete parking space underneath the Melvin Jones Football grounds that will surely require that the massive earth will be excavated, but no longer care to rehabilitate an old hydro-electric plant in my hometown that has been an income generating facility for the city for many decades.

In my article last week, I said “Tuba and barangay LGUs should own the Asin hydro facilities”. An honest to goodness lawyer friend said, the accessory follows the principal. For example, anything inside your car is presumed to be yours. So that when authorities find prohibited drugs inside your vehicle, then you will be held liable for it. Same is true with the hydro-electric plant facilities found inside your property – you own it.   

I just learned from former Tadiangan barangay chair Zaldy Guileng, the community relations officer of a private businessman, that the latter’s company signed an agreement with the LGU of Tuba to have a 60% - 40% “partnership” in two hydro-electric plants to be built by the river. This is a good example of PNoy’s public-private partnership or PPP on the local level that will pour in considerable revenues to the municipality. With or without Regional Autonomy, this is local autonomy at work, especially if Tuba, with its newly acquired Certificate of Ancestral Domain Title (CADT) is utilized to the fullest in accordance with the Indigenous Peoples Rights Act (IPRA).

But, on behalf of the Tadiangan-Nangalisan Hydro Ancestral Landowners Association, may we propose to the private company of Apo Zaldy to consider the plight of the members of the association, and consider the MOA of the association with the City of Baguio concerning the payment of rentals of real properties occupied by the Asin hydro facilities that were built by Engr. EJ Halsema and later turned over and operated by the city for many decades, with no single centavo paid to the landowners.  

After all, TNHALA’s proposal for payment is too small that it may only be helpful to uplift peoples’ lives in a community and Tuba as a whole. Although Tuba’s PPP is a “Johnny come lately” move, there is a wide room for improvement.

Happy trails to all stakeholders – province, municipality, barangays, TNHALA and all. Let us be part of the solution to the energy crisis and look forward to an uplifted community.