|
A
MILITANT legislator advised the Manila Electric Co. (Meralco)
on Thursday to immediately start refunding consumers
“for its crime of passing the cost of its own
electricity usage and inefficiencies to the public” if
it wants to stop what he described as “gung-ho bashing”
of the company.
At the same time, Party-list Rep.
Teodoro Casiño of Bayan Muna called on the Energy
Regulatory Commission (ERC) to act motu proprio to order
Meralco and other distribution utilities to stop such
unjust charges and refund their consumers.
Casiño is also blaming the Arroyo
administration for the high electricity rates across the
country, saying no amount of Meralco-bashing could hide
its own culpability.
“For all its gung-ho bashing of Meralco,
President Arroyo and her minions have the greater
accountability for generating and keeping anti-people
laws in place that allow Meralco and other power
distributors to pass on onerous charges on consumers.
Meralco must refund its consumers and the government
must account for allowing these crimes to happen at the
expense of the citizenry,” Casiño said.
At the same time, Sen. Loren Legarda
filed Senate Bill 2289 that, once enacted into law,
would stop the ERC-approved practice of passing on to
consumers the so-called system losses from pilferage
and inefficiency incurred by power companies.
“This bill seeks to introduce amendments to
Republic Act 7832 (also known as the Anti-Electricity
and Electrical Transmission Lines/Materials Pilferage
Act of 1994) to stop the absurdity of innocent consumers
being made to pay for the criminal activities of some
consumers and the inefficiencies of the utilities they
are forced to deal with,” Legarda said.
Legarda argued that such losses should be shouldered by
power retailers because they are part of the risk of
doing business, and because the retailers should be
fully responsible in minimizing pilferage and losses
from inefficiency.
“If
they cannot pass systems losses to consumers, electric
companies will be motivated to go after pilferers and to
improve their systems to minimize naturally occurring
losses,” she added.
She
also proposed the expansion of RA 7832’s coverage to
include distribution lines and materials from those
protected by the law against pilferage. Legarda’s bill
likewise seeks to increase the fine for pilferage from
P50,000 to a range of P100,000 to P500,000.
She noted that systems loss accounts for
at least 8 percent of the bill of an average consumer or
about 58 centavos per kilowatt hour (kWh). From 2003 to
2007, Meralco customers paid P84.6 billion in systems
losses based on the 70.55 centavos systems loss charge
per kWh.
At the Joint Congressional Power
Commission (Powercom) hearing on Monday, Meralco
executives revealed that the company was charging its
customers 72 million kiloWatt-hours of electricity it
was using at P5.70 per kWh, or a total of P427.5 million
per year.
“This is the height of corporate greed
and government collusion. Meralco has already been
castigated twice by the Supreme Court for overcharging
us. It can be recalled that in 2003, the SC ordered
Meralco to refund its customers P30 billion after it
passed on to its customers its income tax payments from
1994 to 2002. This time, the government, through the ERC
should stop defending Meralco for its immoral conduct
charging its consumers for systems losses and its own
electricity consumption,” Casiño said.
He also announced that he and his fellow
legislators in the House of Representatives will work on
two concrete measures to help in bringing down
electricity rates.
Ferdinand Gaite, national president of
Confederation for Unity, Recognition and Advancement of
Government Employees or Courage, said GSIS presideent
Winston Garcia has no right to put their pension funds
at stake in his recently role as Malacanang’s attack dog
against Meralco.
Garcia meanwhile assailed former
Commission on Elections Chairman Christian Monsod’s
“lame defense” of Meralco’s reported charging of its
customers a whopping P13 billion for “ghost power
deliveries.”
Garcia said Monsod is insulting the
intelligence of Filipinos by peddling to them the story
that Meralco made a “surreptitious” overpayment to First
Gas to the tune of P13 billion for gas that had been
stored for future use in generating electricity. With
B. Fernandez and Z. Solmerin |
