PECO URGED TO REFUND CONSUMERS
FOR “overbilling” its customers by 1,000 percent these past years, Panay Electric Co. (PECO) should refund Iloilo consumers, according to former Iloilo City councilor Joshua Alim.
Alim, in a statement, noted that instead of “wasting money on lawyers and publicity estimated at P300 million,” PECO should consider paying back Iloilo City consumers whom they seemed to have overcharged in recent years.
“Instead of wasting its cash on huge lawyers’ fees and publicity trying to stop the new distribution utility (MORE Power) from operating, they should settle the overbilling issue first,” he said.
PECO has a P630-million overbilling case before the Energy Regulatory Commission (ERC) that has directed the utility firm in 2009 to refund Ilonggos in 2009 from an “over- recovery” of purchased power cost of the electricity it bought from power generation company Panay Power Corp.
Alim, who led opposition to the renewal of PECO’s franchise in Congress from 2016 to 2018, said even the two committees on legislative franchises of the Senate and the House of Representatives based their decision to award the franchise to a new company on the voluminous complaint of overbilling by Iloilo consumers against the old utility firm.
The overbilling of Iloilo consumers that the two committees used as basis in granting the franchise to operate Iloilo City’s electricity distribution system to another company resulted from erroneous monthly bills arising from malfunctioning electric meters and costs jacked up by illegal power connections, the former councilor added.
A technical study conducted by new utility provider, More Electric and Power Corp. (MORE Power), and engineering firm, Miescor, on Iloilo City’s distribution network said only two-thirds of the city’s total electricity consumption came from regular power connections and the third consumed by illegal power connections from small power users estimated to number 30,000 as of 2019.
“This is very bad because not only were we paying for the high consumption from illegal power connections, but were also overbilled by as much as 1,000 percent,” Alim said.
He added that the overbilling was the prime reason why Ilonggos did not want PECO to continue operating after its franchise expired in 2018.
“We Ilonggos still oppose PECO returning to operating the electricity distribution system in Iloilo City. The fact that it would rather pay its lawyers and PR consultants huge fees than pay consumers back shows its attitude toward consumers remains bad,” he continued.
Alim apprised the current power supply situation in the last congresional public hearing on the issue because it accepted MORE Power’s position that it is the only legal power utility in the city because it now has the franchise from Congress and the certificate of public convenience and necessity from the ERC.
“The repair and preventive maintenance works that caused brownouts that PECO is now saying proves the inability of MORE Power to manage the city’s power system came from their own failure to invest in new capital equipment and technology that MORE Power is now solving with its preventive maintenance work,” he said.
MORE Power said the “rotting, decrepit” state of the Iloilo City power distribution network it inherited from PECO is now being addressed with a P1.8-billion, three-year rehabilitation program to give Iloilo City a secure and safe supply of electricity in the next 25 years.