Press Release - Interventions by Senator Risa Hontiveros related to the National Electrification Program

Senator Risa Hontiveros (SRH): Sa una po sa access o electrification.. Nangako ang Pangulo sa kanyang ikalawang SONA noong Hulyo na tatapusin nya ang elektrikasyon sa buong bansa bago sya bumaba sa kanyang pwesto sa 2028.

And as far as I can recall, the 100% total household electrification was promised by the previous administration to have been achieved as early as 2020. Hindi naman siguro COVID na naman ang idadahilan, dahil 2020 tayo nakaranas ng pandemic. In short, hindi ito na-accomplish ng nakaraang administrasyon.

Unang tanong, Mr. Secretary, ano ang estado ng rural electrification sa bansa ngayon? Ilang porsyento na ba ng mga tahanan ang may koneksyon at nakakagamit ng kuryente para sa kaginhawahan ng kanilang pamumuhay?

Secretary Popo Lotilla: What we have here is the status of the electrification program which shows that broken down by the three main grids you have 98.89 percent for Luzon, 97.61 percent in Visayas at 88.12 percent in Mindanao and for the entire country it's 96.17 percent and this is based on census of 2015.

As I've said because we have updated the electrification metrics, this has actually in effect worsen over all from based from the 2020 census. Mr Chairman I just would like to address the observation of Senator Hontiveros that this has been promised in the previous administrations. The explanation is also that the measures and targets have changed for example, the last time I was here in 2005, 2006, the measure was that if there is just one post in one barangay, it is considered energized but then we have been improving across the years also the measure and that became the barangay itself, the main center of the barangay, as households that are connected then later we expanded to sitios so not only the barangay proper but also the sitios. Now we are down to households.

So if we're going to talk about in comparison to the rest of ASEAN, in the case of Indonesia, therefore, they are just below the province level. The district, so they can say, it's 98 percent energized but it is to the same level that we are looking at it which is household. Definitely, this is a more ambitious target that we are setting and we are not solely relying