ANGELES CITY – Mounting complaints against allegedly “exorbitant, unjustified” power rates being charged by this city’s power provider could lead to a “consumers’ revolt.”
The broad-based coalition group Pinoy Gumising Ka Movement (PGKM) raised this possibility as more and more consumers storm both local print and broadcast media to air their gripes against the Angeles Electric Corp. (AEC).
Peter Alagos, editor of CL Businessweek, said he was adding himself to the list of complainants allegedly victimized by what is called “AEC’s massacre of the innocents.”
Asked for clarification, Alagos said “the consumers are all innocent, really unknowing of all those charges in their billing statements, hence the AEC may have taken the liberty to just pad the billing.”
Alagos said his previous monthly billings averaged P3,200.
“For the same kilowatt-hour usage, and even with frequent brown-outs to boot, my bills just skyrocketed to over P5,000 this month. How can AEC justify that?” Alagos asked.
From the May 13 initial expose here in Punto! of AEC’s “poor service and high rates,” the issue has made the rounds of all media in Pampanga with more and more “victims” coming out to denounce the Nepomuceno-owned electric company.
“We are besieged by calls from both businessmen and ordinary citizens denouncing the AEC for the sudden increase in power rates,” said Boy Santiago, co-anchor of the popular program Talakayan sa 95.1 over radio station DWRW in the City of San Fernando.
“Through our program, the consumers have been asking the AEC to make a public statement on the reasons for the increase, but until now we have not heard anything from them,” Santiago added.
A businessman who requested anonymity questioned what he called “the illegality in AEC’s arbitrary increase in its power rates without the benefit of a public hearing.”
Over at station DWGV-FM, PGKM chair Ruperto Cruz and anchor Arnel Panganiban are themselves deluged with complaints against the AEC.
“The AEC as a public utilities agency owes its consumers an explanation. First on how they arrived at the increase in their rates which some businessmen reckon as from 40 to 60 percent,” Cruz said, even as he enjoined the AEC to “make public the computation used to arrive at the percentage of increases.”
“There are those who claim that the AEC charges its consumers even for foreign currency fluctuations. There are those who now demand refunds from the AEC for the electric meter charges ala Meralco. There’s a real need for the public to be clarified,” Cruz added.
Cruz said the statements made by AEC customer service manager Myra Rivera, published here in news on May 13, was “bereft of clarity, couched in generalizations that accounted to nothing.”
“Even her reason for the power outages – passing the buck to the National Power Corp. and the National Transmission Corp. – was classic ‘scapegoating’,” Cruz added.
Cruz warned that the “silence and indifference” of the AEC in the face of the mounting complaints may just trigger a consumers’ revolt.
“What AEC is doing is tantamount to the classic ‘taxation without representation.’ In this case, imposition without explanation. The people have the right to know what they are paying for, that it should be commensurate to the services they are give, otherwise it is plain thievery, if not tyranny,” Cruz said.
Cruz feared mass protests as well as legal actions against the AEC could break out if the consumers’ grievances would not find any redress.
The broad-based coalition group Pinoy Gumising Ka Movement (PGKM) raised this possibility as more and more consumers storm both local print and broadcast media to air their gripes against the Angeles Electric Corp. (AEC).
Peter Alagos, editor of CL Businessweek, said he was adding himself to the list of complainants allegedly victimized by what is called “AEC’s massacre of the innocents.”
Asked for clarification, Alagos said “the consumers are all innocent, really unknowing of all those charges in their billing statements, hence the AEC may have taken the liberty to just pad the billing.”
Alagos said his previous monthly billings averaged P3,200.
“For the same kilowatt-hour usage, and even with frequent brown-outs to boot, my bills just skyrocketed to over P5,000 this month. How can AEC justify that?” Alagos asked.
From the May 13 initial expose here in Punto! of AEC’s “poor service and high rates,” the issue has made the rounds of all media in Pampanga with more and more “victims” coming out to denounce the Nepomuceno-owned electric company.
“We are besieged by calls from both businessmen and ordinary citizens denouncing the AEC for the sudden increase in power rates,” said Boy Santiago, co-anchor of the popular program Talakayan sa 95.1 over radio station DWRW in the City of San Fernando.
“Through our program, the consumers have been asking the AEC to make a public statement on the reasons for the increase, but until now we have not heard anything from them,” Santiago added.
A businessman who requested anonymity questioned what he called “the illegality in AEC’s arbitrary increase in its power rates without the benefit of a public hearing.”
Over at station DWGV-FM, PGKM chair Ruperto Cruz and anchor Arnel Panganiban are themselves deluged with complaints against the AEC.
“The AEC as a public utilities agency owes its consumers an explanation. First on how they arrived at the increase in their rates which some businessmen reckon as from 40 to 60 percent,” Cruz said, even as he enjoined the AEC to “make public the computation used to arrive at the percentage of increases.”
“There are those who claim that the AEC charges its consumers even for foreign currency fluctuations. There are those who now demand refunds from the AEC for the electric meter charges ala Meralco. There’s a real need for the public to be clarified,” Cruz added.
Cruz said the statements made by AEC customer service manager Myra Rivera, published here in news on May 13, was “bereft of clarity, couched in generalizations that accounted to nothing.”
“Even her reason for the power outages – passing the buck to the National Power Corp. and the National Transmission Corp. – was classic ‘scapegoating’,” Cruz added.
Cruz warned that the “silence and indifference” of the AEC in the face of the mounting complaints may just trigger a consumers’ revolt.
“What AEC is doing is tantamount to the classic ‘taxation without representation.’ In this case, imposition without explanation. The people have the right to know what they are paying for, that it should be commensurate to the services they are give, otherwise it is plain thievery, if not tyranny,” Cruz said.
Cruz feared mass protests as well as legal actions against the AEC could break out if the consumers’ grievances would not find any redress.
