Best Posts in Forum: NORECO II Announcements

ATTY. BANDAL'S STATEMENT:
"My parents do not own social media accounts, so I felt compelled to speak for them. This is about the brownout. My parents are the property owners referred to in the misleading, (sometimes libelous) posts circulating online. They are no longer constantly residing in our house in the property, the reason being that there is a big post illegally placed by NAPOCOR (NPC) in the middle of our property carrying 69 KV high transmission live wires, which can pose a real danger to the anyone in the property (imagine, your usual outlet in your house is 220 volts. 69 KV is like 69 x 1000 volts). Word is that there is no electricity because of an ongoing negotiation. That is a complete lie. I will tell you what happened.

As early as 2006, the Supreme Court already ordered with finality that the NPC should remove the post from our property. NPC (later on substituted by the National Transmission Corporation [Transco], being a spin-off corporation and successor-in-interest of NPC by reason of the Electric Power Industry Reform Act (EPIRA) law), did not comply with the order of the Supreme Court, even if the order had already attained finality. About a year later, TRANSCO filed an expropriation case seeking to obtain possession of our property (despite the fact that said issue had already been resolved with finality in our favor, by the Supreme Court, just a year earlier). They offered my parents “25 pesos” for each square meter of property they wanted to get. 25 pesos????? Is that even fair? But again, Transco lost the case. The courts reitereated their previous rulings regarding our property. The courts said Transco failed to show the necessity for expropriating our property. In other words, we won both the aforementioned cases from the trial court level, then at appellate court level, all the way up to the Supreme Court level. Both cases have become final and executory. Despite the fact that the decisions have become final and executory in 2006 and in 2011, respectively, still Transco/NAPOCOR have failed to comply with the order of the Court. NGCP operates, maintains, and develops the country’s power grid owned by Transco, hence the public constantly hear the term NGCP when it comes to these brownouts. However, these brownouts are not caused by any negotiation whatsoever. There is no negotiation to speak of because the cases were decided several years ago.

My mom and dad were in their 40s when these issues began. They were in their 50s when the cases attained finality and when the courts, including the Supreme Court, ordered the post removed. My parents are now in their 70s. Until now, the post has not been removed and we are unable to use our property which my mom and dad acquired when we were still kids. Don’t believe if anyone would say they (Transco, et al.) is/are paying rental to have the post stay in our property. That is not true. It is not rental. It’s damages the court ordered them to pay. We are not in the business of leasing our property for them to place a post carrying 69 kilovolts of power, which has effectively made our property useless. Also, if someone tells you that there is an ongoing negotiation about the property, do not believe them. The cases have already attained finality so so many years ago.
So, to the company/entity causing the problem, I suggest that you follow the order of the Supreme Court and fix the problem. I was informed that works are being done now to restore power. So instead of blaming legitimate property owners, do your job. It’s been 15 years now and counting, and yet you refuse to follow the order of the Supreme Court. Now you forced us to release the decision. There are other landowners who have less legal background than us who are also suffering from the same situation. Stop corporate bullying."