Request to Help Endangered Children in the Philippines
Federico E. Puno,
President
National Power Corporation
Quezon Ave. Agham Road
Diliman, Quezon City
Dear Mr. Federico E. Puno,
Our international campaign against the erection of electric power pylons outside the PREDA Children’s Home began in 1996 during the past administration. Our protest against these pylons was because of the danger to children from electromagnetic radiation that can cause cancer depending on the intensity and length of exposure.
This year we have intensified our campaign with the help of the international community of NGO’s concerned for children’s rights and the environment. Together I tour the USA and Europe campaigning against this project and will continue to do so until the NPC relocates one pylon. We are appealing to the tax payers and the finance ministers of the donor countries who contribute money to the World Bank and ADB who finance NPC and Olongapo City Projects to suspend or delay loans to bank clients connected to corrupt practices and until one pylon is relocated away from the children’s Home.
NPC erected these pylons against tour protest. There is evidence of corrupt practice. There was an agreement between PREDA and NPC that they follow the old route for electric cables over the hill from Halfmoon Beach sub-station up the hill behind the PREDA Children’s Home and into the SBMA. There is an existing 96 KV line still on this safe route. The pylons erected along the national highway in 1996 were unnecessary. Millions of dollars would have been saved if the old line was upgraded, replacing the wooden poles with a steel framework .
There is an extra pylon erected at the expense of the government that makes the cables bypass private property at Gordon park Kalaklan. They would not divert them from the Children’s Home saying it would disturb the dead!. The old power lines pass over the cemetery.
Mayor Kate Gordon in a congressional hearing said there was no danger, so to says the power industry, but why then did they erect a special pylon to divert the cables away from the Gordon property.?
I am writing to you because of our communications and campaigns to the world Bank and the ADB and the investigation they are conducting.
All that we are asking for the safety of the children is to relocate one pylon on a short safe route and there will be a surplus of two pylons which will cover the cost of relocating one. I am enclosing news reports of our campaign and the latest findings on the dangers of Electromagnetic radiation and to there information about PREDA and our world wide protest campaign.
Sincerely,
Father Shay Cullen, Mssc.
Executive Director and President
PREDA Foundation, Inc.
encl/by DHL
LATEST FINDINGS AS OF DECEMBER 1999
Professor Henshaw’s research group discovered the complex interaction between the alternating electric fields surrounding electric cables and the effect when these fields react with naturally occurring radioactive radon gas. Children near cables could receive a powerful done of 95 millisieverts of radiation in a year the maximum allowed for any home is only one millisevert. Nuclear workers are allowed maximum dose of 50 and this is to be reduced to 20.
Professor Henshaw said, " It is clear that if there is radon gas or traffic fumes in the air near pylons then people living nearby will suffer increased exposure because of the electric field ." It’s time for the legislators to get to work and pass laws banishing power cables from residential areas, schools and playgrounds.
