4 get automatic sets in BENECO board

BAGUIO CITY  – Four incumbent and former members of the Board of Directors of the Benguet Electric Cooperative (BENECO) are automatically assured of seats to the policy-making body after they turned out to be unopposed in the scheduled elections for the districts in the city on Saturday, 31 January 2015.
Incumbent members of the Board lawyer Esteban Sumngi of District I (Loakan area) and incumbent Board President Peter Bosaing of District V (Quirino Hill area) were unopposed in their re-election bid while former member of the Board and former City Councilor Rocky Aliping of District III (City Camp area) and newcomer Luke Gumiyac of District IV (Irisan sector) were also uncontested in their bid for the posts.
Dr. Atanacio Padawil, James Aclopen and Victor Benlinan will be contesting the vacant seat of the Board for District II (Marcos highway area) while Mike Maspil and lawyer Marvin Yang-ed will be slugging it out for the vacant seat to the Board for District VI (Aurora Hill area).
Under the guidelines, those who are authorized to cast their votes for their chosen candidates are those who are member-consumers of BENECO who were accepted as members at least 90 days before the scheduled district elections.
Designated polling centers for the district elections will open at 8 am on Saturday and will close at 3 pm. The casting of votes will then be followed by the canvassing of votes for the candidates in the designated canvassing centers for every district and will be followed by the proclamation of winning candidates.
Winning members of the Board of Directors will serve a term of two years and are allowed a maximum of three terms.
Gerardo P. Verzosa, BENECO general manager, appealed to member-consumers to actively participate in the district elections by casting their votes for their desired candidates so that their voices will be heard through the winning member of the Board who will represent them in the cooperative’s policy-making body.
“We look forward to the successful conduct of the district elections and we are hoping that there will be a convincing turnout of member-consumers who will be casting their votes for their desired candidates,” Verzosa stressed.
He said BENECO remains committed in delivering to its over 160,000 individual and corporate consumers quality and reliable power through its effective and efficient system to help provide a competitive cost of power for the people living within its franchise area.
Verzosa assured consumers that BENECO will continue looking for possible ways and means on how to sustain the competitiveness of its power cost through continuous upgrading of its systems for the benefit of the greater majority of the residents of Baguio and Benguet.
For his part, Bosaing, who is on his third term, expressed his gratitude to the consumers of his district for their continued trust and confidence on him as their representative to the cooperative’s policy-making body, citing that he will try his best to bring to the cooperative the concerns of consumers for proper action by management.
Supposedly, the election of the BENECO Board of Directors was scheduled October last year but due to certain issues and concerns, it was moved to 31 January 2015.
By Dexter A. See