|
The full
story about how the Manila Electric Co.’s (Meralco)
outrageously high electric power rates came about has,
of course, yet to be told. As the folks in Texas would
put it, we ain’t heard nothing yet.
By the
time we get the rest of the story, or the far more
salacious details of executive greed that led to the
current exploitation of the utility giant’s customers,
we might have waited far too long to be grateful for the
relief that we deserve.
Point
is, Meralco’s 4.4 million captive customers are even now
anxiously awaiting immediate rollbacks in the cost of
electricity. Such immediate, preliminary relief is
absolutely doable, according to Winston Garcia,
president-general manager of the Government Service
Insurance System (GSIS), which holds a quarter of the
total voting shares of Meralco.
But that
can only come true, of course, if the Court of Appeals
would realize the urgency of the public’s clamor for
justice. For now, the GSIS’s takeover bid is effectively
in limbo while the Associate Justices of the appeals
body take their own sweet time reflecting on the majesty
of the law.
As far
as the public is concerned, there is no need to know
more about how Meralco has taken advantage of its
customers. It has heard enough. It now expects some
draconian action—however preliminary or tentative—but no
more dilly-dallying.
The
popular sense is President Arroyo can do something now
even while waiting for Congress to do its part to mend
the obviously botched-up Electric Power Industry Reform
Act (Epira). As it is, she may not have the luxury of
time to wait for Congress to come up with the desired
amendments. People are getting mighty impatient.
The
Epira amendments are on hold because of a break in the
sessions. It would be a miracle if these make it
through the legislative mill in less than three months,
during which Meralco customers would have to continue
paying Meralco’s extortionist rates.
The good
news is President Arroyo seems to be in sync with the
public pulse on this issue. In a Cabinet meeting very
recently, she expressed impatience over the snags that
have slowed the government’s two-pronged move to lower
those power rates. Those snags are the ones mentioned
above—the GSIS in a state of suspended animation and the
snail’s pace at which Epira amendments is proceeding.
According to a Cabinet insider, President Arroyo seems
to have stumbled on a way to bring immediate relief to
Meralco customers even before Epira is finally amended.
She has ordered an immediate, line-by-line review of the
implementing rules and regulations (IRR) of Epira.
By Jove,
I think she’s got it! These rules and regulations are
just as defective, if not more so, as Epira itself.
Where the law itself clearly specifies something, the
IRR negates the law’s intention by providing a loophole.
For
example, one of the original intentions of Epira was to
ensure that no single group would have a dominant
presence in the electric-power industry. This was to
promote an atmosphere for healthy competition. A major
article of this law, thus, explicitly discourages
monopolies and cross-ownership of corporations in the
distribution and generation subsectors.
But in
the IRR that was subsequently issued by the Department
of Energy (that was when relations between the Lopez
family and the Arroyo administration were still
friendly), it’s okay to be in both distribution and
power generation at the same time, provided one does not
directly operate the generation plant.
So now
we have this monstrosity of a setup where the
Lopez-owned First Gen Corp. wholly owns the Sta. Rita
and San Lorenzo gas-fired power plants. (These plants
alone, incidentally, supply close to 50 percent of the
electricity that Meralco distributes in its vast
franchise area. So what if the power generated by these
two plants are priced much higher than the juice coming
from National Power Corp. or elsewhere? Under Epira,
distributors merely pass on their generation cost to
their customers. It’s perfectly legal.)
But what
about the prohibition on cross-ownership? The IRR took
care of that. While the Lopezes indeed own the gas-fired
plants, someone else—in this case Siemens—operates the
generation plants. Thanks to the loophole provided by
the IRR, cross-ownership in this instance has been made
perfectly legal.
President Arroyo is on the right track by reviewing the
onerous provisions of this IRR. By merely rewriting this
document, she can eliminate the loopholes that the
Lopezes have used to pad our electricity bills.
In
Meralco’s distribution charge, customers are paying
about P0.30 per kilowatt-hour (kWh) for its corporate
income tax. In other words we and not the Lopez
management are paying the tax on their behalf. They
should be made to pay this tax themselves. A reduction
of P0.30/kWh will be that much more money for our
grocery requirements.
It was
also because of this IRR that the Lopez management was
emboldened to charge its customers more than 16 percent
in system losses when the legal limit is 9.5 percent.
Households are being made to pay more than 16 percent.
The Meralco management claims this is legal since
Meralco charges industrial consumers a system loss of
only 7 percent (but heaps the difference on
households).
There
are a good many other ways to hack away the padded
charges in your monthly Meralco bills. It looks like
Mrs. Arroyo has, at last, found a quicker way to fix the
problem while waiting for the long-term solution, which
is the amendment of the regressive Epira.
Omerta_bdc@yahoo.com |
