The Benguet electric Cooperative (BENECO) signified its intention to participate in the conduct of public bidding for the conversion of the city’s streetlighting system from the traditional high-pressure sodium (HPS) bulbs to Light Emitting Diode (LED) bulbs.
BENECO general manager Gerardo P. Verzosa said that the electric cooperative is still awaiting the action of the local government on its proposal to takeover the operation and management of the city’s streetlights and its conversion to LED so that it will be guided with its future actions on the matter.
However, he claimed that if the local government will bid out the conversion of the city’s streetlighting system from HPS to LED fixtures, BENECO is ready to participate in the conduct of the required bidding of the project to ascertain which companies will provide the supply of LED fixtures.
The BENECO official stated that what worries the cooperative is the possibility that the city’s Bids and Awards Committee (BAC) will disqualify its submitted bid on the ground that it is not a duly registered cooperative under the Cooperative Development Authority (CDA).
“ We hope that what happened to BENECO when it was the lone bidder for the proposed rehabilitation and operation of the city-owned Asin minihydro power plants wherein the cooperative was disqualified by the city’s BAC on the ground that it is not a registered cooperative with the CDA will not again happen to us once we will participate in the bidding to be conducted for the conversion of the city’s streetlights to LED fixtures,” Verzosa stressed.
Earlier left the local government to solely maintain and operate the existing HPS fixtures.
Verzosa disclosed that despite the turnover of the maintenance and operation of the city’s streetlights to the local government over the past 10 months, BENECO is still being flooded with requests from concerned residents and barangay officials for the replacement of busted HPS streetlight fixtures which they could not act on because of the termination of the agreement.
He asserted that BENECO does not want to again suffer the consequences of having to participate in the conduct of public bidding for the conversion of the city’s streetlights from HPS to LED only to be disqualified by mere technicality for its failure to register with the CDA when it is a duly registered electric cooperative with the National electrification Administration (NEA).
According to him, it was the people of the city that had been in the losing end when the city’s previous BAC disqualified BENECO when it was a lone bidder in the conduct of the public bidding for the Asin power plants because the generation plants did not generate renewable energy that could have helped in reducing the power rates of consumers in the city.
The local government currently operates some 8,600 unmetered streetlights and over 1,400 streetlights wherein the city spends more or less P50 million annually for their maintenance and operation to ensure the illumination of the city’s barangays as part of the strategies for peacekeeping and anti-criminality.
By Dexter A. See
File photo by Armando M. Bolislis
