Renewable energy advocates in Bacolod City yesterday reiterated their opposition to the power sales contract between the Central Negros Electric Cooperative and the KEPCO-Salcon Power Corp. as they underscored the importance of electricity as a human right.

“We believe that electricity as an essential service should be recognized as one of the human rights,” Esperanza Resus, secretary-general of Freedom from Debt Coalition-Negros, said.

Members of FDC-Negros together and Green Alert-Negros, numbering about a hundred, jointly held a short picket in front of the CENECO office in Mabini St. yesterday afternoon as part of the commemoration of the 59th Anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Both groups made a pile of charcoal to symbolize their opposition to the coal-fired plant to be built by KEPCO-Salcon in Naga, Cebu , the source of the power it will supply to CENECO starting 2011.

Resus said that in an industry imbued with so much public interest, the should people's welfare must be the central subject. “This means that people's participation in all processes, including decision making, is a must. In this principle lies our opposition to the power sales contract, which the CENECO Board has entered into without consulting the member-consumers and without further study on alternative source of energy and the costs,” she added.

Albert Lozada of Green Alert-Negros said they oppose the CENECO-KEPCO contract for economic, stability and reliability, and environmental reasons.

“We have enough power supply coming from clean energy like hydro, biomass-cogeneration, wind and solar. All we have to do is combined these energy sources and we can achieve our goal towards a 100 percent renewable energy Negros ,” he said.*NLG

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