Eastern Samar Governor Ben Evardone on Wednesday said that maintaining power and telecommunications are critical issues that provincial government aims to address during and after natural calamities in the province.
During an interview with Daily Tribune’s online morning program Gising Na!, the Eastern Samar governor stressed that they are always on alert, particularly during typhoon seasons, but described the rehabilitation and recovery after such disasters as a challenge.
“The number one problem that we have is natural disasters,” Evardone said. “It seems that our region is the welcoming committee when a new typhoon comes in the country.”
“The cycle that we are going through in building, rebuilding, devastation, and rebuilding anew is really a challenge for us,” he added.
Relating their experience with super typhoon “Yolanda” in 2013, Evardone argued that maintaining access to power and telecommunications would be of great help to mitigate the effects of disasters in the community.
He also disclosed that electricity costs in the province and in the Eastern Visayas Region have been expensive, saying that rates have gone up to P17/kWh.
While the governor did not cite the source of the figures during the interview, the Eastern Samar Electric Cooperative Inc. reported recently that residential electricity costs for September have indeed gone up to P17.9782/kWh in September and that there was a P0.5697 increase between August and September.
“The irony of it all is that we are a host of two renewable energy plants. We have geothermal and hydropower plants here,” Evardone said, adding that the high costs of their electricity stems from the use of coal coming from GNPower Ltd. Co. in Mariveles, Bataan and that this could also bring detrimental damage to the environment.
Evardone also called for the use of renewable power plants in the region to generate much cheaper electricity for the province.
In the same interview, the Eastern Samar governor revealed that they are pushing certain initiatives to address peace and order in the region, including their service caravan that will reach out to remote communities.