Muna: End to outages in June

The Saipan Chamber of Commerce received yesterday a promise from the new executive director of the Commonwealth Utilities Corp. that load shedding will be a thing of the past come June 2008.

Antonio Muna, who replaced Anthony C. Guerrero at the helm of the embattled utility, said that CUC currently produces 36MW of power by using Power Plants 1 and 2 exclusively.

That is below the 41MW demand of power consumers on Saipan—provided all working engines in Power Plants 1 and 2 are fully utilized.

He said the rehabilitation of Power Plant 4 next month would add an extra 10MW to the electrical grid, which would solve the load shedding CUC recently implemented because of engine problems as well as lack of fuel.

“We can’t just meet demand right now with what we are producing. With the additional 10MW that we will have online by June, we are looking at 40MW. We should get closer by June to ensuring that current demand is met sufficiently and avoid load shedding,” he said.

“Hopefully come June, the [days of load shedding] will be something that we can put behind us. And then plan for sustaining the load from June [onwards].”

Muna also gave the Chamber more good news when he said that rate relief could even be considered if all goes well for the embattled utility. “Going forward after June [hopefully] would be an increased trend of reliability and hopefully rate relief…”

Muna, who has built a reputation as Gov. Benigno R. Fitial’s troubleshooter after overseeing the successful receivership of Bank of Saipan, added that he is fully committed to rehabilitating CUC.

“We’re moving as fast as we can and moving quickly. I don’t look at this job as something I could sit and the chair would conform to my behind. It’s a day-to-day situation and it’s the way I look at it. There’s a sense of urgency here. I’m not going to get comfortable on that chair. I promise you that. We will do the best we can to accelerate the process. We’re at work. We’re rolling up our sleeves and that will be the case in the next six to 12 months in resolving the issue as quickly as we can,” he said.

The new CUC executive director also promised to provide the Chamber more financial details of the utility’s operations—how much it collects and its operational costs—in a month or so.

Muna served as the guest speaker of the Chamber’s monthly meeting yesterday held at the Fiesta Resort & Spa Saipan. He was accompanied at the meeting by Finance Secretary Eloy Inos, who provided a brief financial report about CUC.

Chamber president James T. Arenovski, meanwhile, said that he is glad his members were able to listen to Muna and his plans for rehabilitating CUC.

“The important thing is there is communication. That they’re putting the numbers on the table. We’ve got good questions about that, we need better numbers and we need more detailed numbers and I’ve got commitment from Mr. Muna and Mr. Inos to come back and give us more accurate numbers,” he said.