By DANNY O. SAGUN
PIA Pangasinan Infocenter

SOME junkshop owners have reported to the National Transmission Corporation about transmission line materials in their possession a few days after a recent dialog with them, it was learned Thursday.

Engineer Jose Arellano, district 3 manager of the National Transmission Corporation (Transco), said that the awareness level of junkshop operators and the police has gone up as a result of the three dialogues held in Binalonan for those from eastern Pangasinan, in Labrador for those from the west, and in Dagupan at the Dagupan Village Hotel.

Transco gave the operators a one-week moratorium for them to report or surrender any transmission line material in their possession – insulators, connectors, angular bars, bolts and nuts, aluminum wires, tower plates, and overhead ground wires.—or face arrest and go to jail.

“May mga tumawag three days after the forum in Dagupan,” he told the Patrima Kapihan at the Philippine Information Agency.
Pilferage of tower parts particularly angular bars has been a big problem for Transco and law enforcement agencies. Several towers, weakened by the theft of vital angular braces, toppled down in Southern Luzon and the Bicol region when typhoon Milenyo battered those areas. Transco lost about a billion pesos as a result, he said.

Meanwhile, western Pangasinan division manager Gerry Torres called on people fond of flying kites to stay away from the transmission lines, either the 69-kilovolt ((kv), the 230-kv or the 500-kv lines. “Delikado kapag sumabit yong sanggola nila, baka makuryente pa sila tuland nong nangyani noon sa Mapandan,” he stressed.

He said that the line may suffer a short circuit leading to power interruption when a kite or the cord gets entangled with the high voltage wires. If the cord happens to be magnetic wire, the person flying the kite may suffer electrocution as had happened to the four children in Mapandan who suffered severe burns in their bodies although they survived.

The Transco officials also advised homeowners to keep a good distance from the transmission lines when they make improvements on their houses or buildings. Torres said that the ideal “safe’ distance from a 69-kv line should be 7.5 meters and 15 meters for the 230-kv and 500-kv lines.

Due to right of way problems however, electric poles of cooperatives and firms operating in the province are located very near houses and buildings particularly in the urban areas, it was observed. Some buildings are just a few inches away from the electric poles.