Senator Sherwin Gatchalian on Thursday pressed the National Electrification Administration (NEA) to ensure the continuing and uninterrupted supply of electricity in Baguio City and all 13 towns in Benguet province amid the leadership crisis in Benguet Electric Cooperative (BENECO).
Earlier, NEA Administrator Emmanuel Juaneza assured Gatchalian in a Senate budget hearing that “there’s no more trouble in the area insofar as BENECO is concerned.”
Gatchalian is preparing to file a Senate resolution on the matter.
“Our concern is stability in that area. Baguio is a highly urbanized city and we don’t want them to experience brownouts because of this commotion,” Gatchalian said.
Gatchalian, before tackling the proposed P3.896-billion corporate operating budget of NEA for 2022, brought up the viral video reported by various news websites on what appeared to be a takeover of BENECO early morning of Oct. 18, showing police officers storming the rural electric utility’s office to impose preventive suspension orders on its president, seven board members, and general manager after they refused to recognize the new general manager appointed by the NEA.
Juaneza, who is just a few days into the office, stood ground on NEA’s appointment of lawyer Ana Maria Rafael as general manager and told Gatchalian that NEA will no longer disrupt BENECO’s operations.
He said internal analysis of the BENECO’s current mess showed that it was NEA that did not follow its own memorandum insofar as succession mechanism and selection process is concerned when it appointed the new general manager.
Gatchalian, chairperson of the Senate Energy Committee cited NEA Memorandum 2017-035, the revised policy on the selection, hiring, termination of service/suspension for GMs of electric cooperatives, saying that it clearly provides for the rule allowing BENECO’s board to select the general manager of their choice and for NEA to step in only if the board rejects all pre-qualified applicants.
“We don’t want NEA, the supervisor of all ECs, to be imposing people over a well-run, functioning coop and that is not the intention of the law. The intention of the law is for the ECs to govern themselves and NEA will just step in during problematic times, if it’s badly managed or if it’s an ailing coop,” he further said.
He urged the NEA to “review your own rules. Make sure that you follow your own rule and make sure that BENECO is running smoothly because we owe it to the people of Baguio.”