US, RP light up conflict areas in Mindanao through AMORE program

Jan. 13, 2004, Malacañang Palace, Manila – President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo today symbolically energized with visiting US Secretary of Energy Spencer Abraham 175 remote barangays in conflict areas in some of the country’s poorest provinces in Western and Central Mindanao at a ceremony at the Malacañang Palace to mark the two countries’ cooperative efforts in the field of energy.

The 175 villages are beneficiaries of the Alliance for Mindanao Off-grid Renewable Energy (AMORE) program, a renewable-energy-based rural electrification project funded by the US Agency for International Development and being implemented by US-based non-profit organization Winrock International in partnership with the Philippine Department of Energy, the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM), the country’s largest independent power producer Mirant Philippines, the National Power Corporation - Small Power Utilities Group, Davao Light and Power Company, Inc., the Department of Agriculture’s Quedan and Rural Credit Guarantee Corporation and Bureau of Postharvest Research and Extension, SMART Communications, Inc., and soon, by other public- and private-sector partners.

Under the program, the villages are electrified with indigenous and clean renewable energy, such as solar and microhydro, to power livelihood and social services for sustainable progress, which, it is hoped, would lead to long-term peace in the region long torn by dissension due to its more than three-decades-old Muslim secessionist movement.

President Arroyo and Secretary Abraham initially switched on the lights on the 94 barangays on a map of Mindanao that AMORE has already energized with solar photovoltaic energy in the ARMM provinces of Tawi-Tawi, Basilan, Maguindanao and Sulu. They then proceeded to light up the remaining 81 barangays in these provinces and in Zamboanga Sibugay, Zamboanga City, Sultan Kudarat, South Cotabato and Davao, which are due for energization until the end of the program in September 2004, again using solar photovoltaic energy as well as microhydro power.

Witnessing the switch-on ceremony were ARMM Governor Parouk Hussin, representatives from the AMORE-established Barangay Renewable Energy and Community Development Associations (BRECDAs) in the program’s sites that are tasked to sustain the project’s benefits after its phaseout, and Edgardo Bautista, president of AMORE’s major systems donor, Mirant Philippines.