• GILBERT P. BAYORAN
Consumer groups have renewed calls for the resignation of Department of Energy (DOE) Secretary Sharon Garin after she admitted during a public hearing that the department failed to adequately plan for baseload capacity in the Visayas and address the region’s continuing power crisis.
The Power for People Coalition (P4P) said Garin’s admission underscores what it described as the DOE’s failure to protect consumers from recurring red and yellow alerts and rotating brownouts that began on May 12, 2026.
During a press briefing in Bacolod City on Oct. 3, Garin said she is serving DOE at the pleasure of President Ferdinand Marcos Jr.
P4P campaigner Krishna Ariola said the power crisis was not simply a result of insufficient generating capacity, but was also linked to the government’s continued dependence on coal-fired power plants.
The group cited forced outages at several major coal plants that contributed to power alerts in the Visayas, including Units 1 and 2 of Therma Visayas Inc., Unit 3 of Panay Energy Development Corp., and Unit 1 of KEPCO-Salcon Power Corp.
In a statement, P4P also said coal-fired power plants recorded 459 forced outages from 2019 to 2023.
Caritas Philippines president Bishop Gerardo Alminaza questioned who was benefiting from the prolonged power crisis and whether the government was holding power companies accountable for failing to meet their contractual obligations.
“Who is benefitting from the Visayas power crisis that has persisted? Is the DOE able to make corporations accountable for their failure to deliver on their contracted obligations? Are those responsible held accountable for the outages in Visayas?” Alminaza said. | GPB
