OTHER PHILIPPINE NEWSPAPERS NEWS

Rolling blackouts hit Manila

Published: January 25, 2010 | Author: AFP

MANILA - Manila's suburbs suffered rolling power blackouts Monday following equipment failure at a major plant serving the Philippine capital, the country's main electricity distributor said.

Manila Electric Co. (Meralco) said power would be shut down for up two hours in selected areas of Manila until 9pm, after a water pump failed at a 540-megawatt coal-fired plant north of the city at around lunchtime.

The outages reminded many of Manila's 12 million residents of the power failures of the early 1990s, when the country suffered from a lack of generating capacity.

In recent years, legislators have called on the government to speed up the construction of power plants to avoid a new round of shortages.