PALECO subjected to heavy flak

By Andrio Atienza – May 27, 2020 03:30 AM
from Daily Tribune

Power distributor Palawan Electric Cooperative (PALECO) was bombarded by complaints from member-consumers on what they term as misleading electric bills during the quarantine period.

At the regular session of the City Council in Puerto Princesa City on Tuesday, Vice Mayor Maria Nancy Socrates reminded PALECO officials of their utmost responsibility not to add burden to the people already suffering in the pandemic.

“I would like to remind PALECO that we are a cooperative and cooperatives exist to give service to the members. I hope we should not forget that,” Socrates said.

Angel Antic, former president of the Palawan Bankers Association and member-consumer of PALECO, said since they were also co-owners of PALECO, they sought an averaging scheme to compute bills.

“We have a policy in business that the board of directors issue the decision for an organization. Can’t the (PALECO) board come up with a remedy for this problem during this time of COVID-19,” Antic said.

Hiding behind ERC

Antic said the members of the PALECO board have not been doing their job to ease the plight of consumers while claiming they were only following the Energy Regulatory Commission (ERC) rules.

“They just adopted the ERC advisory. What is the board doing in PALECO? We provide them with salaries, allowances, and travel abroad. These are all paid for by the members. Can we give considerations to the members this time?,” Antic said.

Councilor Elgin Damasco said the directors of PALECO were voted by cooperative members to speak in their behalf and to protect their interest but now the voices of the cooperative members have not been heard because they were just followin the ERC’s orders in Manila.

Error possible

Dennis Solpico, billing section head of PALECO, admitted the PALECO may have committed an over billing of consumers that led to confusions among residents.

However, Solpico said PALECO will disconnect electricity lines after the due date of electric bills.

Councilor Nesario Awat, nonetheless, said the confusion was caused by the series of advisories imposed by the ERC on various electric cooperatives such as PALECO.

“The ERC had ordered PALECO to make its own scheme on billing that will be different from the formula applied on commercial and residential consumers. (Meralco) in Manila also has a different scheme. So, there are different treatment of power companies to the public which caused troubles,” Awat said.

Awat said the ERC should have applied to all the policy on actual meter reading to avoid confusion to the consumers.