WHAT’S up on Iloilo City’s power front? To borrow an idea from a recent Lapsus Calami column, outgoing power-distribution franchisee Panay Electric Company (PECO) and incoming MORE Electric and Power Corporation appear to be observing a “transition period” aimed at forging a smooth turnover.
PECO could not extend its power monopoly beyond exigency, its franchise having expired on Jan. 19, 2019. Its only rightful claim to extension lies on its certificate of public convenience and necessity (CPCN) issued by the Energy Regulatory Commission (ERC), which is valid until May 25 unless overtaken by the implementation of the law awarding the new 25-year franchise to MORE Power.
The new franchise awarded to MORE Power is still waiting for the President’s signature on the new franchise already passed by Congress. The record shows that Malacañang received the document on January 16. The countdown is on: It would be approved within two weeks or not later than February 16, 2019. Left unsigned by then, it would lapse into law after publication in a newspaper of general circulation.
The city’s power users are therefore waiting with bated breath for the bigwigs of PECO and MORE Power to gather together to forge a smooth and mutually beneficial turnover of franchise. Of course, the best way for “change power” is for the outgoing franchisee to bequeath for a reasonable price all equipment and power lines needed to distribute electricity to existing power consumers.
That has not happened yet – no thanks to PECO’s apparent adamance against yielding its 95-year monopoly to the new player.
The company’s lawyers have advised its management to challenge the takeover all the way to the Supreme Court. Of course, that’s understandable; the lawyers need to make hay while the sun shines.
That adamance ought to diminish, however. As announced by PECO Corporate Communications Officer Mikel Afzelius in an interview with a newsman (not from Panay News), any other power distributor has “every right to put up its own facilities and run a power distribution business.”
He did not sound generous though when he added, “Without a valid sale wherein the two parties actually agree, MORE Power cannot touch PECO’s assets.”
But that’s precisely what MORE Power’s chief executive officer Roel Z. Castro would like to discuss with PECO’s Luis Miguel Cacho.
To challenge MORE Power to build its own power lines would be disadvantageous to PECO, which would gain them nothing but rotting poles, rusting feeders, transformers and wires, plus the wrath of the offended and dissatisfied customers.
It would be impractical, moreover, to spend so much time for so much avoidable work.
The law awarding the franchise to MORE Power embodies the power of eminent domain, defined as “the power of the nation or a sovereign state to take, or to authorize the taking of, private property for a public use without the owner’s consent, conditioned upon payment of just compensation.”
If it’s any consolation, Afzelius made the assurance that PECO would “continue to implement its projects.”
Meanwhile, we also continue to hear complaints against PECO. Barely a week ago, this writer drove a friend who had been out of the country for months, Merlyn Bayombong-Pomperada, to PECO’s office to pay her overdue bill and ask for return of her confiscated meter and for reconnection of her power line. After accepting her payment, a company official required her to make a deposit of P8,000. Her supplication that she had already made that deposit in 1990 fell on deaf ears.
Will she have to wait for the entry of MORE Power to regain her power? (hvego31@gmail.com/PN)
