Meralco scored, scores one more time

ON the Meralco estimated billing issue, I believed I wrote my last say when I finally decided to take Joe Zaldarriaga’s word for it: “Don’t pay.”

As simple as that. If anybody feels he has been overcharged, then Joe’s solution is for them to hold in abeyance payment of their bills until such time as there shall have taken place a one-onone checking of their electric meters to ascertain the veracity of the figures in those bills.

“How many Meralco consumers are there?” I asked Joe.

“Seven million,” he said, cool as cool can be.

“Seven million!” I gawked. “Yes,” he said, then took a big sip of the red wine I served him in that lunch audience.

“Are you telling me that Meralco would be bringing down those seven million meters one by one from their placements high up on electric posts?” I pursued my bafflement.

“Yes.”

You’re not kidding, I said to myself. Indeed, Joe was not kidding. Days after that audience, a team of technical people from the central office of Meralco came bringing down my electric meter from atop a post along Sumulong Highway in Antipolo. They insisted to do in my presence the nitty gritty of checking whether the gadget had any defects of sorts and then finding none, proceeded to do an actual reading of the consumption indicated there for March and April — the period of the contested estimated billing — and then adding the registered results to my consumption for May- June, they finally came out with a total consumption amounting to P33,000.

“My foot!” I cried inside. “P33,000! When the estimated billing I was contesting amounted to much less, P25,000!”

I smiled wryly, the feeling of a man who has desired just half but ends up losing a whole ganta of rice: what Joe was commanding me not to pay was the P25,000; what I am obliged now to pay is the P33,000.

Me and my big mouth.

At any rate, Meralco granted me a reprieve of six months within which to pay. My godson egged me to ask Meralco to give me instead a year. I’d dare no more. Next, I could get from Joe is: “Pay now or you end up doing a Leo Tolstoy!”

Tolstoy is the author of that classic tale titled “How Much Land Does A Man Need?” It tells of a man who, desiring the largest tract of land to own, takes the challenge by a landowner to sell to him at a great bargain a land which he can encompass by walking from sunrise to sunset — on the condition that if he fails to reach the starting point at sunset, the payment for the land will be forfeited. Thus, does the man set out at sunrise to navigate with his feet the widest area he can mark out till sundown, never pausing neither for rest nor for meal. By late afternoon, he is increasingly staggering even as he panics at realizing that he is way off the starting point. So, he summons all his remaining energy to run as fast as he can. True enough at the strike of sunset, he reaches the starting point to the cheers of the crowd. But then and there he collapses. The next scene unfolds showing the man being buried on the spot he had dropped dead. How much land does a man need? Just 6 feet into the ground for his final rest.

The above fate of the greedy peasant could be an analogy for either of the parties in the controversy over the increasing electricity rates: on the one hand Meralco, being the one on the line as seller of electricity; on the other hand those pushing for lowering of the price of electricity based on perception that Meralco has been charging a bit too much already.

To both parties, here is this piece of advice. As Sun Tzu would put it, “Give room for your enemy to escape.” That way, combatants don’t end up annihilating each other.

An unidentified advocacy group deserves being granted the goodness of intention in ventilating in the media that perception of Meralco so- called overcharges. According to this group, it is not true that increases in electricity rates had been brought about by tighter supply conditions, unplanned power outages and the slow revival of activities resulting from easing of lockdown measures.

Moreover, the group downplays the impact of the Feed-InTariff (FIT-All) in the increase in Meralco rates, even presenting an actual case to drive home its point, citing thus: “A sample electricity bill from May to June with a total kilowatt-per-hour (kWh) of 937 that amounted to less than P10,000 shows a measly amount of less than P50 or less than 0.50 percent. It implies that FITAll isn’t a contributor to higher electricity rates. Likewise, a June billing period only yielded a P42 FIT-All rate for a household that consumed a total of 2,439 kWh.”

We will have time to tackle this FIT-All scheme later. For now, we focus on the group’s view that FIT- All, contrary to its promotion as contributory to increases in price of electricity, particularly that of Meralco, actually is a necessity for the development of energy and does not account much for such increases.

So, by the group’s contention, Meralco is solely to blame for “… blunders of Meralco over the past months on overcharging and the P47 ‘ convenience fee’ snuck in its online payment portal should be addressed by Meralco alone. Apart from an explanation and letter of apology to its patrons, the public deserves better service. The thousands of complaints at the ERC ( Energy Regulatory Commission) and Congress are already evidence that Meralco mishandled the situation.”

In the audience I had with Joe Zaldarriaga cited earlier, he sought to clarify the matter by citing that only 20 percent of the amount reflected in the electric bill goes to Meralco; the rest goes to generation charges and other matters necessary to bring electricity to households of consumers.

“Joe,” I said, cutting in, “people won’t buy that line. When your collectors deliver the bills to your clients, it’s Meralco and no one else that’s collecting, Meralco and no one else gets the money.”

I realized later I was rather rude in that interjection and Joe was so good- natured in just nodding and saying, “Yes.”

But this time around, I feel constrained to consider that information in its full impact.

What is 20 percent of my bill of P33,000? P6,600.

Isn’t that amount fair enough for delivering to my house three- months’ joy of electricity?