Power Outages Make for Dark Days in Sweltering Manila : Philippines: A crisis that originated in the Marcos years now causes daily blackouts of up to 10 hours. Officials promise relief by 1996.

When President Fidel V. Ramos cut the ribbon two weeks ago to open the first part of a new 105-megawatt electric generating plant, he hailed it as the beginning of the end of the Philippines’ crippling power crisis.

“We can now say we are over the hump,” Ramos said with a grin as he switched on the diesel-fired Batangas Power Plant south of Manila.

Actually, the $120-million power plant is still undergoing tests and won’t produce full commercial power until the end of June. And even as Ramos spoke, a dozen other major generating facilities were broken or out of service. Once again, millions of Filipinos were without lights, fans or refrigerators at the height of a sweltering hot season.

These are dark days for the Philippines. With about half the power plants failing or undergoing maintenance on an average day, and the rest generating only a fraction of their planned capacity, the sprawling capital and much of the main island of Luzon have endured blackouts of up to 10 hours every day and night now for more than six months.

Even worse, Francisco Viray, the country’s new energy czar, now predicts that the Philippines will suffer outages until 1996, when a crash program to build new plants should finally provide sufficient generating capacity. Some consider that a rosy forecast.

“I really sympathize,” Viray, president of the state-run National Power Corp., said in an interview. “Everybody’s really suffering.”

That puts it mildly. Up to 3 million people on Luzon have lost jobs or are working for reduced wages because of outages, economists say. The impoverished nation’s hopes for an economic recovery--last year the economy actually lost ground--have been shelved as factories are idled, shops are darkened and foreign investors have shied away.

“It’s a disaster,” said businessman Raul Concepcion, who heads a presidential task force that is supposed to schedule the blackouts. “Nobody expected this to last so long.”

The cost, Concepcion said, is more than $2 billion so far this year in lost jobs, production and sales. But the real costs are far worse in a city of 10 million, never known as a garden spot, anyway.

Crime is up as muggers and thieves take advantage of the dark, police say. Fires have increased as blacked-out residents resort to candles and kerosene lamps. Accidents are up as drivers careen through intersections with no working signals. Hospitals lose air-conditioning, elevators, surgical wards and, sometimes, patients.

“It is hard to operate using only flashlights,” said Dr. Hilarion Ramiro, a physician and congressman who has called hearings on dangers at hospitals.

About 1,600 large factories are given schedules for blackouts, which are called “brownouts” here. But other residents get no warning, so planning is impossible. Worst of all, many say, are sudden outages in the long, muggy nights.

“My children cry and can’t sleep because it is too hot,” said Rolly Delapena, a weary-looking salesman whose home loses power each night.

Phones, faxes and computers are affected. Worse, power outages to Manila’s pumping stations, added to a drought, mean large parts of the city get water only an hour or so a day. Richer residents pay private companies to deliver water by truck.

“Without power, we have no water,” complained Alma Llamos, who owns a small knitwear factory. Her power is cut during daylight, so her 60 seamstresses now sleep by day and work at night. “I pity them,” she said.

Air pollution is significantly worse, environmental officials say, as tens of thousands of homes, shops and restaurants now rely on diesel-burning, smoke-belching private generators. The resulting roar is not always welcome.

At least one man was reported killed by his neighbor over a noisy home generator, police said. Several American officials are so wary of complaints and threats that they sit in the dark rather than use the small but deafening generators the embassy has purchased.

“We’ve had some people with very unpleasant experiences,” said an embassy official. He said he used his generator only once.

Ramos, elected a year ago, inherited the power crisis from his predecessor, Corazon Aquino. She abolished the corrupt Energy Department after she took office in 1986. She also mothballed the 620-megawatt Bataan Nuclear Power Plant because of safety concerns and reports that Westinghouse Electric Corp. had bribed the late President Ferdinand E. Marcos to win the contract. A federal trial over the bribery allegations is under way in Newark, N.J.

But Aquino’s government neglected to build any power plants during her six-year term to replace aging facilities. Meanwhile, peak demand has grown from 2,300 megawatts in 1985 to 3,450 megawatts today.

The result was predictable. There were 101 days with blackouts in 1990. Last year saw 258 days of outages. They’ve hit every day now since Oct. 1.

Ramos initially appeared to ignore the crisis. Then in April, he obtained special “emergency” powers from Congress. He raised power prices, ordered faster contracts and vowed to revamp the power agency, which again faces charges of corruption and ineptitude.

Whether that’s enough is unclear. Thanks to poor maintenance, substandard spare parts and constant use, only one of 11 thermal plants supplying the Luzon power grid works at full capacity. The rest produce only about half-power and often break down.

In suburban Quezon City, factory owner Willie Villarosa threw up his hands. Since the crisis began, he has paid to sink a deep well to supply water, bought battery-powered telephones and spent $40,000 for generators. His overhead is up one-fifth, he said, while his sales are off by a third.

“Who wants to buy a TV, or stereo . . . if you have no power?” Villarosa said angrily. “We are all suffering.”