ILOILO City – Power consumers here are outraged by the brownouts taking place just one week after ports magnate Enrique Razon’s MORE Electric and Power Corp. (MORE Power) took over the operations of Panay Electric Co.’s (PECO) five substations.
In an advisory released on MORE
Power’s Facebook page, the company noted that it took more than two hours to
finish the restoration of unscheduled power interruptions in barangays Santo
Niño Sur, Santo Niño Norte and Calaparan in Arevalo district, and Barangay Calumpang
in Molo district.
MORE Power attributed the power interruption to a “momentary line fault”
although experts said the resumption of power should have been much earlier.
Netizens were quick to take to social media their grievances with the slow service.
“Ano
ba MORE? Bago pa lang kamo, duha na ka oras brownout di,” posted Rolando Dabao, former Iloilo City councilor.
“Expect brownouts pa MORE,” commented
Victor Bernardo.
Some consumers complained that MORE
Power was not responsive to queries on the company’s steps to rectify the
situation, with Pol Ibarreta lamenting, “Wala
na si MORE ga-reply sa Facebook.”
I-Konsumidor, a group of power consumers in this city, felt that the power
struggle between MORE Power and PECO is putting consumers at a disadvantage.
“We must take note that MORE Power’s franchise in Republic Act 11212 provides that PECO must first settle its obligations to the consumers before wrapping up its operations,” the group said. “We cannot rely on MORE because it is not bound to settle such obligations to us when it eventually takes over the distribution services.”
The group also questioned the speed with which MORE Power was granted a provisional authority to operate by the Energy Regulatory Commission (ERC), emphasizing their concern that it could become the basis for MORE Power to bill consumers.
“MORE is running the facilities but
PECO is the one which has contracts with power generators. These contracts
cannot be assigned to MORE,” said the group.
“If MORE will start billing us after two months, what will be the basis of
their rates? We don’t know because there was no application nor did we attend
or even learn of any public hearing on their application for provisional
authority to enter into a Power Supply Agreement,” added the group.
Before MORE Power secured its franchise, PECO was the sole power provider in
Iloilo City for 95 years, tracing back to the post-World War 2 rehabilitation
efforts.
On the other hand, MORE Power entered
the energy industry just two years ago, and at the time it was a small-scale
mining company by the name of MORE Mineral Corp.
PECO is not alone in its proclamation that MORE Power does not have the
technical capability to operate the power distribution facilities. Section 17
of Republic Act 11212 states that PECO “shall in the interim be authorized to
operate the existing distribution system.”
Judge Emerald Requiña-Contreras of the Regional Trial Court, Branch 23 even
declared in an addendum to the Writ of Possession she issued earlier that “the
operation should still be handled by PECO personnel who have the technical
expertise.”
On March 6, following MORE Power’s
takeover, Judge Contreras ordered MORE to return the operations to PECO,
stating that she was still uncertain of MORE’s technical capability.
“The Regional Trial Court of Mandaluyong has already said that what MORE Power
is trying to do is unconstitutional, but they keep using misrepresentations and
blatant lies to force their way in,” stressed PECO head of Public Engagement
and Government Affairs Marcelo Cacho.
He added: “They even claim that they can do what we do when they clearly cannot, and this is considering that they unsuccessfully tried to pirate our technical experts.”/PN
