As an ordinary consumer, Laarni Ilagan and BENECO make me proud
Pre-Semester Non-Lecture Analysis 34
I waited three days before going public on Facebook with my minor gripe about still not having electricity despite the storm being over.
At 6:30 AM, well over 2 hours before the start of office, BENECO’s Laarni Ilagan, probably still in her pajamas, was on Facebook PM already asking me about my location, contact details, etc. Ten minutes later it was the turn of Director Mike Maspil, one of the Magnificent 7, to assure me he would get hold of somebody to look into it. An hour and 45 minutes later, the power was back.
What can I say–thank you would be par for the course, of course. But I should say a few other things too, other than gratitude platitude. First of all, I’m sure I am not the reason for the prompt service, there were numerous complaints on social media from my neighbors near and far, from Lexber Heights, Petersville and Woodsville, gated communities all–but that’s not even the point. To the unsung heroes that NEA likes to bamboozle and intimidate–the BENECO linemen–it was all in a day’s work. They attend to reports from commoners and kings with a blindfolded dedication to help whoever sought it first or needed it most.
I know they’d run to a busted transformer that’s near a hospital first because all those life support machines in their ICU’s don’t run on batteries too long. As for everyone else, you wait your turn. They’ll get to you when they get to you. Which, to me, is totally fair. Mother Nature they say is an uncompromising equalizer. She rains down hard on rich and poor, beauty and beast, privileged and wretched, with even ferocity. So when she breaks down trees and snaps power lines, a kind of technological democracy descends upon the whole city: a power blackout.
One man, one volt. You can’t get more democratic than that. Still it’s a hard habit to break for the shamelessly self-entitled to expect power on demand. Thankfully, this doesn’t hold sway to these stoic intrepid linemen working under the toughest spartan conditions. It is not figure of speech, or pun, to say these linemen put their lives on the line. A couple of years ago, one of them died in the line of duty. He wasn’t incompetent, he was trained to handle 23,000 volts in live maintenance work. What he wasn’t warned against was the greed and dishonesty of somebody pilfering electricity by rigging an illegal connection and using a tin roof as improper ground.
It’s customary for BENECO to tell the public in their announcement to always treat all lines as powered. To their linemen, the precaution is a hundred times more daunting. They have to treat every metallic thing they touch as powered. In this proliferation of pilferage, it often is. That’s why I told Laarni, “it’s okey, hija, I can wait. Don’t rush your linemen. I don’t want anyone getting hurt just so my electric kettle can boil water for my coffee in five minutes.” Laarni’s reply to me was succinct and polite, as it was educative: “thank you for your understanding, sir. But I still need your location and other details so we can determine exactly the whole area affected.” Of course, silly me. It’s not about ME. It’s about everyone else who might also be affected–that’s what “service to the people” really means. So I gave in and texted back all the information she wanted.
I’ve never felt so embarassed and proud at the same time. Proud of Laarni. Proud of BENECO.
The author is a writer and lawyer based in Baguio City, Philippines. Former editor of the Gold Ore and Baguio City Digest, professor of journalism, political science and law at Baguio Colleges Foundation (BCF). He is a photographer and video documentarist. He has a YouTube channel called “Parables and Reason”