A LITTLE less than a month before last Thursday, we were hit with two whammies. We mean the little upstart business that our family is operating in our rural residence.
The whammies? Two long power outages that affected adversely our establishment’s operation. The first one was a power outage that lasted for over eight hours sometime in the second week of November this year. The second one was another power interruption that lasted for some five hours, starting at about 9:30 in the morning and going on until about 3 p.m. last Thursday.
The first long electric service disruption resulted in the total wastage of all the primary merchandise we have – ingredients for the people’s favorite during hot days, halo-halo, almost all our pet fish, the Kois, that our family painstakingly took care of for the last ten years, and averaging about two kilos each, died because of lack of oxygen in the pond. The electric-run motor pimp could not function without power. Hence, oxygen was lost in the water pond.
The second whammy, the five-hour outage, melted the newly frozen mixtures that were supposed to be finely ground for the halo-halo. So, our small establishment was unable to meet its commitment to provide some sixty large glasses of our merchandise to some sixty senior citizens and their guests from the city government in their Christmas party, which was also affected by the unexpected long power loss.
When the electricity was restored, there was nothing our cold snack center could offer because all the melted mixtures.
With those power outages, we can understand why operators of both small, medium, and large businesses in the island City of Samal complain to the maximum every time they are hit by long power interruptions.
Now we cannot help but ask this question: Will a change in power supplier guarantee that outages like what happened in some barangays in Tugbok district during the period we mentioned will not happen to those areas in Davao del Norte?
We can only wish that the long outages that happened affecting areas that included our barangay will serve as a lesson to consider when the new distributor finally takes over. It has to prove that it is far better than the outgoing one, so the consumers in the area will end up having their expectations met.
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Talking of power interruptions, we do not know if the situation we experienced during past electric service outages is coincidental or deliberate.
We are referring to our failure to contact the call center of the power supplier using the land line we have been subscribing to with the country’s leading telecommunications company for the past many decades already.
It is our experience that we cannot use our landline when there is a power interruption. The reason is that our subscription plan makes our unit dependent on the internet. So, when there is no electricity, the Internet is also lost. Hence, without the Internet, our landline is also dead.
So it now appears that only the availability of a fully charged power bank can allow us or any other similarly-situated subscribers to continue using the land line. But what if there is none, or the power bank is used in school by student members of the household, or when the outage strikes, the gadget is empty?
To be honest, we have no idea why this scheme is being adopted or whether or not there is a “meeting of the minds” of those who initiated the procedure.
We are, however, hoping that any of the public utility companies concerned will find time to “educate” the many who are ignorant like us of this scheme of things.
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We have observed lately that the Davao City Council has been approving only some kind of “high-end” sounding city ordinances that, to us, sound good to the ears, but with a very minimal number of Davaoenos likely to benefit.
Take, for example, the one authored by Councilor Bonz Militar, which is an ordinance allowing Davao City to acquire sophisticated computer hardware and applications that will supposedly help identify people with criminal records and/or intentions.
In the process, with the same ordinance, the system to be adopted in the entire city will help prevent crimes.
But what about the residents of areas not reached by the coverage of the system’s application? It is in areas like these where criminals lurk, oftentimes with appearances of “angels” or innocent beings. How will the system trace them?
Of course, we are not saying that the Ordinance is not beneficial. All that we say is that given the number of those who’ll be directly benefited against those who will not, the city may not be able to get a reasonable return on its investment in having the local law implemented.
We are just wondering if our councilors are not employing people who can help them do research and develop appropriate measures for existing situations in the city. As much as possible, any proposed ordinance must affect the majority, if not all, of the city’s population, including those in the rural and upland areas, be they natives or Christian settlers.
