MORE Power to ERC: Junk Peco’s appeal
By Lenie Lectura – June 9, 2020
from Business Mirror
More Electric and Power Corp. (MORE Power) is asking the Energy Regulatory Commission (ERC) to dismiss the appeal of Panay Electric Co.’s (Peco), which seeks to reinstate its provisional certificate of public convenience and necessity (CPCN).
MORE Power said Peco committed “grave abuse” for filing different legal cases meant to stop MORE Power’s takeover.
“For more than one year, Peco has continued holding on to the distribution system despite having no franchise. It misused judicial processes to derail the expropriation proceedings mandated under RA 11212,” said MORE Power.
Peco has filed various cases against MORE Power. These are pending with the ERC, a local court and with the Court of Appeals (CA).
“To grant Peco’s appeal to restore its CPCN, therefore, is to reward disingenuousness, gross disrespect for the courts this Honorable Commission, and repeated abuse of the judicial process,” said MORE Power.
MORE Power also cited Peco’s failure to do preventive maintenance that left the distribution system “rotting, decrepit and a ticking time bomb.”
“The deterioration of the distribution system of Peco accelerated during the one-year period when Peco, using all sorts of dilatory actions in the various courts, delayed the issuance and implementation of the writ of possession for the takeover of the distribution by MORE.”
“During that one-year period, Peco ran the distribution to the ground with little or no rehabilitation or maintenance. Many parts of the aging system were overheating and bursting into flames on a regular basis.”
MORE Power said 122 personnel are now running the distribution system. Also, it has replaced over 100 distribution transformers.
“The technical readiness of MORE is evident in that it was able to take over operations of Peco as soon as it took possession of the facilities on 28 and 29 February 2020 with no disruption to the power supply to Iloilo City.”
To assure Iloilo that it fulfills its promise of better service, MORE Power said it set a record of rapid responses to customer complaints, with an average response time of one hour and 30 minutes.
