The Ghost In Town

“We don’t have electricity!” This was what the hotel personnel told me upon my arrival in town. She said that they have a generator set but will only be turned on at 6 o’clock in the evening until 12 midnight. I didn’t have a choice, I was already there and other hotels in the island may have the same situation.

According to the word of mouth circulating, the power barge of the National Power Corporation needed repair. But there were other stories that were worth noting.

• That the power cooperative has a huge debt to Napocor amounting to 400 million pesos,
• That the power will come back if a downpayment of 70 million is paid and a promise of 4 million monthly payments is made.
• That most of the power cooperative’s uncollected bills were of the government agencies in the area also amounting to millions of pesos.

Whether these stories were true or not, the effects of this ghost to the powerless were horrendous.

• The economic activities in town were heavily affected. Not all businesses in town have generator sets; even so, most of these generators can only power incandescent lights and hardly electric fans. Air conditioning units, refrigerators and other appliances were put aside.
• The use of individual generator sets increased the demand for gas. Local gas stations ran out of supply not only because of the increased demand but the expected supply didn’t arrive because of the bad weather. The supply that kept them lighted was the smuggled gas from the nearby country.
• The smuggled gas was cheaper before, but because of the incident it went up and away beyond the galaxy costing as high as 95 pesos per liter.
• The use of kerosene lamps also increased the demand for kerosene. The price went up from 43 pesos per liter to 140 pesos per liter.
• Transportation cost doubled, water supply was cut off because it is powered by electricity which is non existent.
• Residents buy water at 50 pesos per barrel.
• Text messaging was stopped for two days because the generator the supplied power to the communication tower malfunctioned.
• No TV. The cable operator doesn’t have generator that can power its equipments. The town can’t get free local channels. Maybe the country’s two major TV Networks did not know that there are people living in this part of the country.

All these things happened for two weeks already before I arrived. The situation remained the same when I left after a week of stay in darkness. According to word of mouth circulating, situation would be back to normal in 3 months.
.