Group to Meralco: Waive electric bills during ECQ
By Lenie Lectura -April 13, 2020
from Business Mirror
Consumer advocate Power for People Coalition (P4P) wants the Manila Electric Co. (Meralco) to waive electricity bills in contrast to the utility firm’s announcement of a power rate hike for April.
“Meralco should waive the bills of all households in its franchise area for the entire period of the quarantine and not just defer it. We must understand what will happen to middle- and working-class families after the quarantine under the current setup—they will be saddled with debt as they work to pay for rent and their utilities even as their jobs may no longer exist due to the recession sure to happen from the Covid-19 pandemic,” said P4P Convenor Gerry Arances.
Last Thursday, Meralco announced a P0.1050 per kilowatt hour (kWh) rate hike to P8.9951 per kWh this month from last month’s P8.8901 per kWh. This is equivalent to a P21 upward movement in the total bill of residential customers consuming 200 kWh.
The power rate hike adjustment, Meralco said, was due to the normalization of the Universal Charge (UC) rate.
P4P urged the government to intervene and unilaterally waive all utility bills and rentals for all households for the period of the enhanced community quarantine.
“The whole nation should come together during this difficult time, and I don’t understand why some can make a profit while the rest continues to sacrifice. The effects of the quarantine seems to disproportionately burden frontliners who are battling the virus and trying to keep us fed, the working-class who suffer from the lack of work, and the middle-class who are denied relief while at the same time will absorb most of the cost through their taxes.
This doesn’t have to be the case when large resources remain frozen in large companies, resources which can be used to alleviate everyone’s suffering in this trying time,” said Arances.
He also pointed out that consumers should not shoulder the cost of mistakes made by energy companies, particularly in their reliance on imported fossil fuels, such as coal.
“Energy companies decided to use imported coal and policy-makers let them, despite its cost and destructive effects to health and the environment. Why then must consumers support Meralco when the company itself has overcharged consumers several times and has yet to return billions of pesos in consumer money?” he said.
Meralco, for its part, explained that the slight adjustment this month is not due to an increase in the cost of producing and delivering electricity, but mainly due to the Universal Charge returning to its normal level following a one-time refund of P0.1453 per kWh in UC-NPC Stranded Contract Costs (SCC).
Meralco’s invocation of the force majeure provision, however, helped temper the UC increase, reducing fixed charges for generation capacity that was not consumed.
The increase in UC resulted from the Energy Regulatory Commission (ERC) directing Meralco last month to implement a P0.1453 per kWh rate reversal in UC-SCC representing collections in excess of the amount due to Power Sector Assets and Liabilities Management Corp. (PSALM).
With the one-time refund completed, UC normalized this April, with an increase of the same amount implemented this month as an effect. The existing UC remitted to the government is used for electrification in off-grid areas, NPC’s financial obligations in excess of privatization proceeds, and watershed rehabilitation and management.
The increase in UC was tempered by the P0.0495 per kWh decrease in the Feed-In-Tariff Allowance (FIT-All) for April, as the ERC ordered a one-month deferral of the FIT-All in consideration of the current Enhanced Community Quarantine (ECQ).
Universal charges cover Missionary Electrification (UC-ME), NPC Stranded Debt (UC-SD), and Environmental Charges (UC-EC) and are remitted to state-owned PSALM. UC-ME funds the electrification of remote and unviable areas that are not connected to the transmission system, while UC-SD covers NPC’s financial obligations that are not covered by privatization proceeds. UC-EC are used for watershed rehabilitation and management.
