Over 102,000 life­line con­sumers free of elec­tric­ity

Davao del Sur Elec­tric Coop­er­a­tive, Inc. (DASURECO) heeds the call of the Philip­pine Rural Elec­tric Coop­er­a­tives Asso­ci­a­tion, Inc. (PHILRECA) and the National Asso­ci­a­tion of Gen­eral Man­agers of Elec­tric Coop­er­a­tives, Inc. (NAG­MEC) to pro­vide sub­sidy to mar­gin­al­ized elec­tric­ity con­sumers fol­low­ing the government’s strict imple­men­ta­tion of the enhanced com­mu­nity quar­an­tine (ECQ).

The pro­gram which tar­gets life­line con­sumers in the coun­try whose income and liveli­hood was affected by the pan­demic is dubbed as ‘Pantawid Liwanag’. It is a cor­po­rate social respon­si­bil­ity pro­gram of the elec­tric coop­er­a­tives, under the umbrella of PHILRECA, in response to the government’s effort to curb the impact of the pan­demic through Repub­lic Act No. 11469 or the “Bayani­han to Heal as One Act”.

In sup­port to this call, DASURECO’s Board of Direc­tors headed by Direc­tor Rodrigo B. Sace­dor together with the man­age­ment endeav­ored to free its life­line res­i­den­tial con­sumers con­sum­ing 30 kilowatt-​hours and below of up to two (2) months billing period, March and April 2020. A total of 53,564 life­line res­i­den­tial con­sumers were given sub­sidy for March billing period and 49,116 on April. DASURECO was able to allo­cate almost 8 mil­lion pesos to 102,680 life­line res­i­den­tial con­sumers with over 1.3 mil­lion kilo­watts used within two months.

The sub­sidy fund for the ‘Pantawid Liwanag’ pro­gram was sourced out from the allo­cated bud­get for insti­tu­tional activ­i­ties like the Annual Gen­eral Mem­ber­ship Assem­bly (AGMA), dis­trict con­ven­tions, and oth­ers which were can­celled due to COVID-​19 outbreak.

As of this writ­ing, DASURECO has not imple­mented dis­con­nec­tion since March to alle­vi­ate the con­sumers’ plight amid this pandemic