Bagumbayan Party vice presidential candidate Bayani Fernando said Friday the government's incompetence in the fields of science and engineering is the main cause of brownouts.

“The simultaneous shutting down of power plants for, accordingly, maintenance purposes, the poor inventory of power source and requirements and the poor anticipation of the El Niño phenomenon are just some of the proofs of engineering incompetence of our energy officials,” Fernando, who is a mechanical engineer and former chairman of the Metro Manila Development Authority, claimed.

Metro Manila, some provinces in Luzon and cities in the Visayas and Mindanao are suffering a series of rotating brownouts everyday for the past few weeks. The 540-megawatt (MW) Limay combined cycle power plant in Bataan and the Malampaya gas power plant were shut down for maintenance.

Fernando explained that energy officials should come up with a doable measure to avoid power shortage and an ideal schedule of maintaining and upgrading the power plants in the country.

He also expressed fear that the brownouts may be intentional so the people in affected areas would not be able to view the political advertisements of some politicians.

“Nakakapanghinayang naman na mag-aadvertise ang mag kanididato sa telebisyon o radio at hindi naman mapapanood o mapakikinggan ng mga tao e sayang naman ang ibabayad ng aming mga taga-suporta. E, hindi naman kami mayamang kandidato tulad ng iba (It’s a waste of valuable campaign funds for if brownouts occur in areas where we, and other opposition candidates, believe we have many supporters),” he said.