COTABATO CITY --- More than 30,000 families in North Cotabato have benefited from the “Pantawid Liwanag” program of the Cotabato Electric Cooperative (Cotelco) in North Cotabato province.
In a press briefing at the Cotelco headquarters in Matalam town on Monday, July 27 engineer Godofredo Homez, Cotelco general manager, said the beneficiaries were residential “lifeline” consumers mostly belonging to the marginalized sector heavily affected by the coronavirus disease 2019 (Covid-19) pandemic.
“These are the families who mostly depend on their farm harvest or minimum wage workers whose industries were suspended due to this pandemic,” Homez said.
Lifeline
consumers are households whose electricity consumption is less than 25
kilowatts per hour.
“They will not be paying the electric bill for the month of April when the whole country was under the enhanced community quarantine,” he said.
As of
Tuesday, Cotelco data indicated that some PHP3.4 million has been allotted for
the free electric bills of 32,151 households on the first wave of the “Pantawid
Liwanag” program in the province.
Homez said Cotelco has allocated a supplemental fund to subsidize the payment of other power suppliers and transmission charges.
“We
canceled some activities to augment adequate funds for the program, which
really benefited the needy and pandemic-affected families,” he said.
The
"Pantawid Liwanag" program forms part of the rural electrification
sector’s contribution to the Bayanihan to Heal as One Act during the Covid-19
crisis. (Noel Punzalan, PNA, MINDANAO EXPOSE')
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