AS A POWER consumer, this writer believes it’s time for a new group to take over Panay Electric Company (PECO) as the next power distributor in Iloilo City. It has only until Jan. 19, 2019 to operate because that date marks the expiration of its 25-year franchise – unless renewed.
Having been in business for an exceptional 95 long years, PECO has no doubt made billions of pesos in profit and therefore in no danger of losing investments made. But as to whether it has lighted up the lives of most of its 64,000 customers, oh no! A major reason is because the company has not kept pace with modern times. Looking at its leaning lamp posts, “spaghetti” wirings and dangling “whatevers” is like traveling back in time to the year 1923 when PECO’s first bulb lighted up.
One has to drive through the Megaworld to experience power modernization. But it was not because of PECO that the insulated wires thereat were buried underground; it’s because the electrical engineers and laborers of that business conglomerate did it on their own.
When I asked a PECO official why they could not modernize, he said, “It’s too expensive.”
Did that guy think there would be no need to invest further in the absence of threat to their monopoly? Well, it was probably well said if meant to explain why a term-limited power franchise should not remain unchallenged by a competitor.
I have nothing personal against PECO. But I was privy to its conflict with its own employees. There were years in the early 1990s when I lived in the same house with Enrique “Boy” Huyan, a PECO employee and the then president of Panay Electric Company Employees and Workers Association (PECEWA). The company terminated him and Prescilla Napiar from employment after leading a strike participated in by majority of its disgruntled employees wary of management “wrongdoings.”
In fairness, PECO began big in the year 1923 with the most prominent Ilonggos of that era as incorporators, namely shipping magnate Don Esteban De la Rama, Jose Ma. Arroyo (a former senator after whom the Arroyo Fountain in front of the provincial capitol was named) lawyer Mariano Jalbuena, Emiliano Lizares, Jose Lopez-Vito, Modesto Ledesma, Marcos Alfaras, Jose Tiongco, Yap Seng, Eulogio Hernandez, Jose L. Jalbuena, and Jose G. Paramos.
Four years later, however, they sold their shares of stock to Candelaria Ditching Cacho. Since then and to this day, the Cacho family has dominated the corporation.
By the end of World War II in 1945, PECO had lost some of its power generators and 80 percent of its distribution lines. But the Cacho family solved the problem by converting dividends into capital stock that made rehabilitation possible.
In 1996, the First Philippine Holdings under the Lopez Family bought 30 percent of its capital stock, which it used to invest in Panay Power Corporation (PPC).
With the implementation of the Electric Power Industry Reform Act (EPIRA) in 2001, however, PECO had to give up power generation because the new law prohibited electric distribution utilities from producing power and mandated them to buy electricity from suppliers.
PECO’s reliance on political “connections” has made it insensitive to the grievances of its overbilled customers who had to pay or suffer dark nights.
The top-level company management was simply confident that a franchise renewal bill (HB 6023) filed by Rep. Jesus Romualdo in 2017 would hurdle the House and the Senate. Alas, they were wrong.
On the contrary, a new franchise has been approved in principle and is expected to be awarded to a new player, MORE Electric and Power Corporation.
PECO pa rin, or MORE na? (hvego31@gmail.com/PN)
