More Electric and Power Corp. , the new distributor of Iloilo City, has slammed the pronouncement of Panay Electric Co. of investing P1.1 billion in the next 10 years, calling it nothing more than a legal gimmickry.
“I commend franchise-denied PECO, its legal advisers… for making that statement to spend P1.1 billion. This is the amount, more or less, they owe the consumers,” said MORE president Roel Castro.
“What the consumers in Iloilo are paying since years ago already includes that P1.1 billion which they did not invest in the past. So it’s just right that they pump it in because they owe that to consumers. In fact, they have to spend that in 10 weeks, not 10 years!” he added.
Castro pointed out that even the Court of Appeals, in its ruling denying PECO’s bid to stop the expropriation proceedings, had recognized that MORE is now Iloilo’s sole distribution utility, charged with ensuring and maintaining stable electricity supply for the city’s 65,000 households and businesses.
He also said that franchise-less PECO’s announcement would have been appreciated better by Iloilo consumers and both chambers of Congress had it invested the money 10 years ago.
Instead, PECO’s announcement serves merely as a public relations stunt in a desperate bid to undo Congress’ decision to grant the electricity distribution franchise to another company because of numerous complaints by thousands of Iloilo consumers and its failure to modernize its facilities despite its stockholders, Castro said.
“If PECO spent that amount 10 years ago, the Iloilo City Council would not have passed a resolution asking Congress to find a new distribution utility to manage the city’s electricity distribution system and the Senate and the House of Representatives would have renewed its franchise that expired this year,” he said.
“Instead, Congress granted the franchise to MORE and President Rodrigo Duterte signed it into law,” Castro added.
He also noted that PECO’s announcement was held in Taguig City instead of in Iloilo City, where its former customers should be hearing it, instead of a grand event again using its profits from Ilonggos who kept up with PECO’s “inefficient and unfriendly services for 95 years.”
For its part, MORE is spending close to P1.7 billion in the next three years to modernize the electricity distribution facilities in Iloilo City after securing the DU franchise from Congress last December.
It has sought to expropriate all the ageing distribution network of PECO in Iloilo after President Duterte signed its franchise into law as Republic Act No. 11212, which authorized MORE to take over all and any facility and property it needs to ensure Iloilo City and nearby municipalities have continuous and assured supply of electricity.
But PECO refused to accept Congress’ grant and the President’s signing of the law by seeking court action outside Iloilo to stop it, on grounds that the act was unconstitutional and deprived it of its economic rights.
MORE had secured the expropriation order from the Iloilo City Regional Trial Court in line with the provisions of RA 11212 and the Electric Power Industry Reform Act or EPIRA, Castro said.