"This is the problem that Iloilo City Mayor Jerry Treñas must now confront head-on."
"This is the problem that Iloilo City Mayor Jerry Treñas must now confront head-on."It's not about politics, folks, but about electricity.
The Philippine legal system protects consumer interests through laws setting standards of quality and safety. In fact, the 1987 Constitution authorizes Congress to issue franchises to companies that will provide vital public services such as power and water. In the case of electricity, we have such laws as the Philippine Distribution Code and the Philippine Grid Code. The Energy Regulatory Commission created by Republic Act No. 9136 or the Electricity Power Industry Reform Act (EPIRA) is mandated to set the requirements for licensing or the issuance of Certificates of Public Convenience and Necessity (CPCN) to companies involved in the generation of and distribution of electricity to communities. These standards are intended not only to ensure reliable and sufficient electricity for homes and businesses through good management, but also to see to it that consumers will be safe considering the sensitive nature of electricity transmission.
This is the problem that Iloilo City Mayor Jerry Treñas must now confront head-on. He has asked Malacañang to intervene as he views with grave concern the threat to public safety brought about by “inadequately-maintained lines, power outages and hazardous electric posts” owned by the city’s old utility, Panay Electric Co. (PECO), which has been denied a new franchise by Congress and is now operating on a provisional CPCN from the ERC until the new franchise holder, More Electric and Power Corp. (MORE), completes its takeover.
Barely a year back at the helm of City Hall, Treñas found it disturbing that PECO’s aged and dilapidated transmission facilities have caused not a few fire incidents in the city with no concrete action from the company to solve the problem.
Treñas has urged the Office of the President to direct the ERC to do something about PECO’s failure to solve the problem of PECO’s antediluvian transmission lines and wooden electricity poles burning down as power lines go haywire from strong winds or rusting transformers blow up. He listed down nine fire incidents that hit PECO’s electricity poles from Oct. 19 to 21 alone based on the Bureau of Fire Protection’s report to City Hall, which apparently caught his ire after repeatedly asking PECO to do something about the problem.
Piqued by PECO’s inaction, the Iloilo City mayor said he was “obliged to take the necessary steps to address the needs of the people considering that the problems and complaints raised against PECO have direct impact not only on the property but also on the lives of residents of Iloilo City.”
“While the attention of PECO had been repeatedly called (by the Office of the City Mayor) to address the (complaints), the city is still plagued by the same problems,” Treñas said in his complaint to Malacañang.
MORE, the new franchise holder, said the incidents clearly demonstrate that PECO’s recent pronouncements only show it has not acknowledged its failure to provide Iloilo City with safe and sufficient electricity supply as the reason why it failed to convince Congress to renew its 95-year-old franchise.
Roel Castro, MORE president and a veteran of the electricity power industry, lamented that while PECO’s recent announcement it was investing P1 billion to improve Iloilo’s electricity transmission system is most welcome, this is an exercise in futility because it has lost its franchise to operate.
Moreover, Castro explained that the MORE announcement to spend P1.1 billion is "the amount, more or less, they owe the consumers. So it's only proper they will pump it in because they owe it to consumers. In fact, they have to spend that in 10 months, not 10 years!” said Castro.
So how will this struggle for power play out in the months ahead? We'd really want to see the final outcome.
Iloilo's struggle for accountability
While we're at this, Iloilo City residents are wondering what has happened to a low-cost housing project in Pavia district funded by a P125-million bond flotation in 2001 that has yielded not a single one of the 413 units supposed to have been built since then.
With interest mounting over the years, it's taxpayers who have to shoulder a heavy burden for a project that was ostensibly for the benefit of the homeless and the poor but appears to have gone only God knows where.
The project unraveled in 2002 when subcontractors abandoned the worksite after complaining that the project contractors had not paid them a single centavo. The subcontractors' complaint reached the city council, prompting an investigation of the mess.
In 2003, the city council completed its probe and came up with three recommendations: (1) rescind the contract with the project builder; (2) compel the contractor to pay damages; and (3) charge certain city officials and the contractor for graft.
The city council panel headed by Raul Gonzalez Jr. pushed for graft charges against an ex-mayor, the incumbent mayor and the project contractor.
It took two years before the council recommendation was acted upon. Deputy Ombudsman for the Visayas Primo Miro resolved in May 2005 to suspend some city officials and indict them before the Sandiganbayan.
Ombudsman Ma. Merceditas Gutierrez took no action on the case but on Aug. 20, 2010—after five long years—OIC and Deputy Ombudsman Orlando Casimiro gave the go-ahead for the 2005 Primo Miro resolution to be implemented. However, he deleted certain names from the list of officials to be indicted before the anti-graft court. Instead, he ordered the Ombudsman-Visayas office to delve deeper in its probe of the housing project.
To this day, Iloilo City taxpayers are still left in the dark whatever happened to the P125 million intended for low-cost housing that's nowhere to be found, even as the interest on the debt keeps piling up, and up, and up.
ernhil@yahoo.com