MORE Power urges ERC to deny co-op’s petition
ILOILO City’s new power utility has asked the Energy Regulatory Commission ( ERC) to deny an appeal of the old utility Panay Electric Co. ( PECO), to get back its license, saying the latter has shown total disregard of consumer interests in running to the ground the city’s distribution system and focusing on making money for its lawyers, public relations consultants and stockholders.
More Electric and Power Corp. ( MORE Power) told the ERC, in its opposition to PECO’s supplemental motion, that the old utility showed grave abuse of the courts in mounting different legal cases to bar the full takeover by the new congressional franchisee as the city’s new power utility through the expropriation of the distribution system.
MORE Power revealed to the ERC, that PECO even continues to send monthly bills to Ilonggos despite losing its provisional Certificate of Public Convenience and Necessity ( CPCN) from the ERC.
The utility said to protect the consumers of Iloilo City from PECO’s fraudulent activities, the Iloilo City government had revoked PECO’s business permit, making PECO’s activities related to the operation of the distribution system highly illegal.
PECO also does not have a franchise and is no longer a legitimate CPCN holder.
The new utility said PECO had misrepresented MORE Power’s direct hiring of the former’s technicians as proof of its claim that the new utility could not even hire trained people to handle the utility’s technical operations.
MORE Power added that 122 personnel were now running the operations, including 61 from service providers contracted by PECO to cut costs and maximize its stockholders’ dividends.
The company pointed out that it was the report of the ERC’s technical inspection team, which apparently convinced the commission that MORE Power has become fully capable of and has taken full possession of the distribution system in Iloilo City.
The company stressed that it hit the ground running when it started its operations of the city’s distribution system and immediately replaced eight defective distribution transformers.
To date, MORE Power has replaced over 100 distribution transformers and counting.
It has set a record of rapid responses to customer complaints with an average response time of one hour and 30 minutes, including changing of exploding transformers.
In contrast, PECO’s hotline number stopped responding to consumer calls at 5 p. m. every day, so when a brownout occurred after that time, PECO’s response team would not respond till the next morning or even two days after at best, MORE Power said.