NO MORE (no pun intended) foreplay. Let’s get right to the heart of the matter and we chew on this for starters.
It’s all over including the shouting save for some shrill irrelevant whimpers as the issue was sorted legally by the courts and the proper government agencies. It’s now the proper time to talk about one of the real and ongoing problems affecting the power consumers of “I Am Iloilo City”.
This is illegal electrical connections a.k.a. “jumpers”. An illegal electricity connection is made when a person attaches their home’s electrical circuit to the power grid without a meter. This is done without the consent or knowledge of the power provider.
The power provider cannot monitor the electricity consumption and so the electricity is being stolen as these consumers do not pay for the electricity.
Some people make money by supplying illegal connections and others have no legal way to access electricity and so they resort to illegal connections. Others have access to legal electricity but prefer not to have to pay for it.
And this is how it goes: we start with an illegal jumper overloading the power lines, resulting into system overload causing power interruptions. This results into your classic brownout or the power lines explode and we have your usual electrical fire that burnt down the whole neighborhood.
This chronic problem with jumpers i.e. brownouts has been plaguing the legitimate power consumers of “I Am Iloilo City” for the past century during erstwhile power provider Panay Electric Co.’s (PECO) watch, with them seemingly doing nothing tangible to at the very least address the problem.
It is a given fact and empirical data that system losses due to electricity pilferage can reach 20 percent and cause power disruptions.
Likewise it is also a fact that illegal electrical connections a.k.a. jumpers are the main reason for these major power interruptions.
A system study showed there could be 30,000 illegal power connections in Iloilo City that raise the total systems losses to 20 percent.
Translated into wattage, illegal connections could account for as much as 20 megawatts of the 100 megawatts that Iloilo City consumes every day.
Of course an illegal electrical connection or jumper is a criminal offense a violation of the Anti-Pilferage of Electricity Act and Theft of Electric Transmission Lines/Materials Act of 1994 RA 7832.
Again we ask the question: What has PECO done about these illegal electrical jumpers during their watch? Did they just condone it and simply charge the pilferages back to the legal consumers?
It would be pointless to blame PECO for the mess that was dumped on the laps of now power provider of “I Am Iloilo City” MORE Power. Let me illustrate why it is so in perhaps one of life’s greatest moment of irony.
During a hearing in the Iloilo City Sangguniang Panlungsod re: the power situation, after PECO’s Mikel Afzelius’ unsolicited lengthy discourse extolling the virtues of his family’s company, MORE Power president Noel Castro simply replied, “Anything you say has no bearing at all. You have no franchise, you have no CPCN and you have no business permit. You should have done that before.”
And that is why we should not blame PECO as they are no longer relevant.
But what about MORE Power, the current power provider of “I Am Iloilo City”? What have they done about this illegal jumper problem?
One reason given on the proliferation of jumpers is the very stringent requirements of erstwhile power provider PECO on those applying for an electrical connection. To remedy this, MORE Power partnered with the Iloilo City Government on a “power for all” program called “I-Konek, MORE Konek” which aims to address the city’s informal settlers and low-load applicants with simplified and friendlier requirements.
And the currently ongoing “Oplan Kontra Jumper” which is literally going after the estimated 30,000 illegal electrical jumpers in the city so far since June of this year when it was launched 1,090 illegal jumpers have been apprehended.
Meanwhile, we segue back to the brownout situation. If you noticed, most of these power interruptions happen in the districts of Molo, Arevalo, Mandurriao and the fringes of Jaro.
Elementary, my dear Watson, it is also in these areas mentioned where we have the largest concentration of illegal electrical jumpers, particularly those informal settlers area in Mandurriao and Molo.
Informal settler families have complained that they paid P20 per kilowatt hour of electricity they use every month to the syndicate that sold them their illegal connections, a high rate compared to the P9 per kilowatt hour charged by the company.
It looks like somebody’s making money at the expense of the legitimate electricity consumers of “I Am Iloilo City”./PN
