MABALACAT CITY – Electricity consumers in this city and six other Pampanga towns have sought the intervention of Pres. Duterte amid their power bills that have catapulted by about 100 percent or, in some cases, several thousandfold.
The consumers have been storming Facebook with expressions of outrage over their bills for the month of May issued by the Pampanga Electric Cooperative 2 (Pelco 2) which covers this city and the towns of Porac, Santa Rita, Bacolor, Lubao, Guagua, and Sasmuan.
The cooperative has about 65,000 consumers. Scores of consumers posted on Facebook their billings for last April and May for comparison. One consumer showed his last April bill costing P1,568.62 has shot up to as much as P85,298.34 in May.
Tony Cauguiran of the group Mabalacat Stop Corruption has started a phone text message drive asking consumers to air their complaints to Pres. Duterte himself via number 8888. The number was established under Duterte’s Executive Order No. 6 for people relay concerns to Citizens’ Hotline and Complaint Center.
In his Facebook account, Cauguiran appealed to Pelco 2 consumers to “unite, sacrifice and spend” P2.50 per text to the center. “Pelco 2 seems untouchable. What it’s doing is too much,” he said.
Retired teacher and actress Cecille Yumul, a resident of Barangay Lakandula here, said Pelco 2 power consumption meters might have been “shaken to run wild during the last April 22 earthquake.”
Punto! called up Pelco 2 via two landline numbers indicated in website pelco2.com, but no one answered.
In the publication Balacat News, however, Pelco 2 reacted to the complaints and virtually blamed consumers for practices that lead to higher bills, such as unplugging appliances not being used or using appliances which are too old. It also attributed in high bills to the use of cooking appliances amid hot weather.
Pelco 2 also passed on the higher electricity rates to the Wholesale Electricity Spot Market (WESM) which was launched by the Department of Energy way back in 2006.
Ironically, the creation of the WESM was intended to bring down the cost of electricity by allowing the sale and purchase of electricity supplies everyday for every given hour.
But consumers debunked Pelco 2’s explanations. One consumer said he had been taking care of the bills of a former neighbor whose house had already been demolished for a still pending new structure but whose electric meter was retained to avoid the difficulties of power line reconnection. He noted that from less than P3 per month of billing for power meter maintenance, the absentee neighbor’s bill rose to over P4,000 for last May.
Consumer Rio Precious Ursal, in her Facebook account also noted her bill of P764 last April jacked up to P2,842 in May. “Are we consuming too much electricity or is it you charging us to much?” she asked.
Ma. Luisa Carvajal Buenaventura noted: “IIsang linggo pa lang kami nag-stay sa bahay namin, ang dating P60 na binabayad namin biglang naging P559.66 na. Sobrang pagtaas yata yan, di makatarungan.”
Another case is that of consumer Chaddy Guttierez who said that apart from his suddenly big electric bill, his billing for May also indicated he had arrears which he denied.
Joyjoy Galang bewailed the monopoly of Pelco 2 in supplying electricity to local folk. “If only we had the choice to connect instead to Tarelco (which supplies power to Tarlac) or Angeles Electric Company, we would opt for either,” she lamented.
This, as Yumul urged Pelco 2 to void May billings and charge consumers only according to their April bills. “In the light of the alarming obviously technical malfunction of your meter readings due this May, can you not have brains and courage to declare reading void and make us pay this due based on the last reading paid last April?” she asked.
Other consumers also expressed “wonder” over the ability of Pelco 2 electric meter readers to allegedly accurately see and take note of power consumption readings on their meters lumped high together on electric posts.
