BAGUIO CITY – The Multi-Secoral Electrification Advisory Committee (MSEAC) federation of Baguio City passed a resolution urging the local government to fastrack the conduct of public bidding for the conversion of its streetlights to state-of-the-art Light Emitting Diode (LED) to ensure the realization of the government’s peace and order and public safety initiatives.
The resolution was enacted by the MSEAC to awaken the concerned offices of the local government to look into the matter considering that it will be the people in the city’s 128 barangays who will be affected once the Benguet Electric Cooperative (BENECO) will take drastic actions to turnover the management of the streetlights to the city.
MSEAC federation president and former Lourdes Subdivision Extension Punong Barangay Benjamin Macadangdang claimed that the MSEAC will also bring the matter to the attention of the Board of Directors of the Association of Barangay Councils (ABC) for them to initiate the appropriate dialogue between city officials and BENECO officers for them to thresh out the issues that have contributed in the delayed implementation of the conversion of the city’s streetlights to LED and for them to agree on a possible ‘win-win solution’ that will not prejudice the people of the city in the future.
Macadangdang appealed to BENECO management to refraim from taking any drastic action that will significantly affect the state of the city’s streetlights because it will be the consumers of the cooperative that will suffer the consequences of whatever drastic moves that will be done by the cooperative on the matter.
On the other hand, the MSEAC federation also passed a separate resolution urging all public utility companies that have existing wires on already rotten poles that are within road-right-of-way to immediately remove the said wires and relocate the same so that the poles that cause obstruction could already be retired for purposes of public safety.
Earlier, barangay officials raised concern over the existence of rotten poles with dangling cable wires that are existing in their areas of jurisdiction which pose a serious threat to pedestrians and motorists, thus, the need for the immediate removal of such dangling wires and rotten poles to prevent the occurrence of incidents that will posed a serious threat to the safety of life and limb.
BENECO officials claimed that power lines that were previously attached to wooden poles in the city were already transferred to the concrete poles which served as replacement of the wooden poles and what had been left on the wooden poles are cable wires of telecommunication and cable companies operating in the city.
The MSEAC federation asserted that rotten poles that still exist in the center of various roads around the city should already be retired the soonest before the occurrence of any untoward incident that will compromise public safety, especially that power lines that were previously attached were already transferred to their concrete poles wherein telecommunication and cable wires are now the ones that are considered a threat to public safety.
By Dexter A. See
