House Minority Leader Marcelino Libanan seeks a congressional inquiry into Eastern Samar’s power crisis and Esamelco’s deteriorating service.
Libanan filed House Resolution No. 846 calling for the inquiry.
“Eastern Samar is now reeling not only from excessive electricity rates, but also from recurring power outages and persistent low voltage power supply,” Libanan said.
“We want Congress to get to the bottom of Esamelco’s bad and costly service so that we can fix the problem,” he added.
Esamelco is the lone electricity distributor in Eastern Samar’s 22 municipalities and the provincial capital of Borongan City – a service area with a population of almost 500,000.
“We must stress that all electric cooperatives are duty-bound to provide dependable and adequate supply of electricity in their service areas,” Libanan said.
According to him, Esamelco currently charges residential customers P15.62 per kilowatt hour (kwh), which is 30 percent higher than the Manila Electric Co.’s (Meralco’s) P12.04 per kwh rate.
“The extremely high rate is unacceptable, considering that Esamelco cannot even provide reliable power supply on a constant and continuous basis,” Libanan said.