As of April 16, 80 individuals in Davao City have tested positive for COVID-19. While this is a relatively low number compared to other urban regions in the country, the pandemic continues to be a risk that residents face every day, more so for those in charge of ensuring basic services continue to run — people like Allan Villaver and his team from Davao Light.

While the streets and alleys of this southern frontier city lay empty, Allan and company are out busy doing routine maintenance work like installing power line covers to prevent electrocution, fixing feeder and lateral trips that can lead to power outages, or connecting customers to the grid. They have physically demanding tasks, which have now been made more complicated by an invisible enemy that still has no cure.

“[E]ven though we have this fear in ourselves...we always instill in our minds that we must do our job to sustain the stability of our system since everybody needs the supply of electricity, especially in the hospitals,” shared Allan, gang supervisor for field works at Davao Light, a company he has been with for over 12 years.

As the third largest privately owned electric distribution utility in the country, Davao Light serves Davao City, areas of Panabo City, and the municipalities of Carmen, Dujali, and Santo Tomas in Davao del Norte and is responsible for delivering power to a population of 1.8 million. Although most of its franchise area has been under enhanced community quarantine since April 2 and majority of establishments are closed for business, Davao Light stays open to ensure the critical services it provides are uninterrupted.

Still, the company continues to operate within the limits set by the local government and health authorities. Although 53% of the company’s staff are working from home, roughly 47% still report to the office or are deployed as part of the engineering, customer service, or admin teams that form the skeleton workforce.

We owe it to the customers that we provide them continuous service. What will happen if everyone is afraid?

– Ross Luga, AVP for Reputation Management, Davao Light

Business continuity is highly perceivable for utility companies, something Davao Light knows well as evidenced by how its operations have continued to run relatively smoothly. The contact center is operating round-the-clock like normal, customers can still transact albeit within curfew hours, and maintenance and emergency crews still respond to trouble calls as fast as they can. But with public transport operations shut by a local executive order, Kaibigans have embraced carpooling with their colleagues as a way to move around in the city. Despite the mounting risk, they carry on — mask, alcohol, and all — knowing that they have a mission to continue providing the power and energy to sustain basic human life.

In addition to their daily work orders, the engineering team has been busy throughout the community quarantine: restoring one substation, four feeder and recloser trippings, and repairing units of contaminated pin insulators for feeders located on P. Reyes.

“For our linemen who are our frontliners in the field, nothing has changed much in terms of work assignment except that the focus has shifted priority to emergency response and prevention of troubles to happen. Their work order assignments are sent in electronic format,” said Mervin Dalian, who heads the Davao Light engineering distribution services department and commands a team of two gangs  composed of 10 organic field personnel, more than 20 contractor gangs, and 31 emergency crews.

“We ensure that power interruptions are responded [to] and restored as fast as we can. We prevent big troubles from happening, which may result in power interruption. We protect our lines and make them safe for the public,” he explained.

No room for power failure

Unlike most utilities companies with a 30-day collection policy, Davao Light only issues notices to customers with 60 days outstanding balance, and following the Department of Energy's mandate, the company effected an additional 30-day extension. Though this has the potential to affect the company’s liquidity, it would give customers more leeway to pay their bills, which makes all the difference for those living paycheck-to-paycheck.

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Davao Light is also actively supporting efforts by local health authorities to contain the spread of the virus. This is especially important in a health crisis when a broken distribution line could impair the ability a hospital's access to electricity, which could all too easily lead to human tragedy.

Healthcare and educational facilities like the Department of Health’s Treatment and Rehabilitation Center in Malagos, and Alternative Learning System on Camus Street (or ALS-Camus) have been energized. There is also continuing electric service installation works at the Boy Scouts of the Philippines campground in Malagos and City Social Services and Development Office building, which have all been identified as shelter facilities for COVID-19 PUIs.

Various teams from the distribution network, power metering, and streetlight and pole utilities departments have been mobilized to probe and repair thermal anomalies at Southern Philippines Medical Center (SPMC) and Mindanao Medical Foundation. They have also installed metering facilities for the City Health Office and erected a street lighting facility in the Malagos isolation area.

Davao Light ensures we have uninterrupted supply of electricity, especially to hospitals and government buildings. Our field personnel are doing emergency and maintenance  works despite the crisis.

– Mervin Dalian, Head of Distribution Services, Davao Light

He also shared that a Viber group (‘Team Abtik’) that includes members from Davao Light, Department of Public Works and Highways, Office of the City Building Official, and local telecom companies has been formed, which aims to fast-track collaboration in emergency situations, in the same way they mobilized to set up ALS-Camus.

An expanded meaning to 'safety first'

Like any business operating in this time of crisis, it is a delicate balance between ensuring that customers get the same level of service they’re accustomed to while protecting the workers who deliver that service. To ensure the safety of Kaibigans reporting for duty, thermal scanners have been installed in Davao Light’s offices in Ponciano, Bajada, Panabo, Maa as well as in the Systems Operations Department (SOD), complemented by periodic disinfection of high-touch areas.

Face shields have been made available for frontliners from the Materials and Management Department and 196 sanitary kits have already been distributed to on-duty team members. Those going out to the field can also avail of foot bath basins made out of scrap metal from the Bajada Power Plant.

“We protect ourselves by using face masks, bringing alcohol to disinfect our hands while in the field, and we keep the social distancing rule, especially when interfacing with customers,” Allan explained.

Helping in more ways than one

Beyond making electricity continuously available, Davao Light team members are fully aware of their responsibility to look out for others who put their lives at risk: healthcare professionals at the frontline. Through a fundraising project with other Aboitiz Mindanao BUs including Cotabato Light, Hedcor, Therma South, Therma Marine, and Apo Agua, team members were able to collect a total of PHP275,000 within nine days. This was used to buy medical supplies for healthcare personnel at the SPMC, the Department of Health’s designated testing facility for COVID-19 in Mindanao. With this amount, they were able to make an initial purchase around 300 pieces of DIY face shields, 5,000 pairs of medical gloves, and 30 liters of alcohol, with more to set for purchase once supply is available.

For Fermin Edillon, Community Relations Manager at Davao Light, involving Kaibigans in the fundraising and volunteer activities draws on their Aboitiz core values and a strong culture of empathy and generosity. Each Kaibigan believes in serving not only customers but the greater community as well. This was manifested strongly on the heels of three strong earthquakes in Mindanao in October 2019. Davao Light team members promptly donated cash out of their own pockets to support relief operations and actively participated in packing activities.

Across the group, Fermin observed that team members have long demonstrated a unique willingness to give back and pay it forward, taking their cue from the owners of the business themselves.

“Our team members are really givers having been exposed to a long history of visible generosity of the owners,” he said proudly. “The Aboitiz Way has really inspired our TMs to be cheerful givers.”

This is also how Davao Light’s human resources team successfully led everyone in the company to refer to and treat each other as Kaibigan, a term that puts empathy and readiness to respond at its core.

“At the onset, we know that we will be able to get support [for the fundraising] knowing that each Kaibigan has that innate spirit of giving especially evident in times of crisis and calamities. This has been done on several occasions and we get the same result,” Fermin explained.

Their actions speak for themselves. Well-loved by the community and recognized by the local authorities, Davao Light has received various awards and recognition for their volunteer and CSR efforts through the years. These include those from local government units, national agencies like the Department of Education, Department of Social Welfare and Development, Technical Education and Skills Development Authority, and from the Dabaw Lunhaw Awards, an annual award that celebrates good environmental practices.

For Ross, a crisis brings to fore the values that an organization stands for. Like a house built on sub-standard steel, a crisis reveals gaps and deficiencies in the same way that a house built on solid foundation withstands the heaviest storms and bounces back quicker.

“As a team, we are able to rebuild who we are, what we stand for...that will really reveal [itself] in this kind of situation,” he said. “There’s no ‘I’, only ‘we’ working together as one solid group.”

And that may well be the spark inside each Kaibigan who is dedicated to keeping the light on, especially now when communities need them most.

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