Time to open Meralco’s ‘Book of Accounts’

LAST Sunday, in my interview with Sen. Imee Marcos over my regular radio program, ‘Meet the Press On Air’ at ‘Radyo Pilipinas’ (738khz, AM band), she mentioned that in one of their (Senate) previous “sit down” with ‘Milagro Electric,’ err, ‘Manila Electric Company’ (Meralco), the latter claimed incurring “losses” from their “commercial” clients.

If memory serves right, Meralco, according to Sen. Imee, told lawmakers their losses from the shutdown of businesses due to the Luzon-wide lockdown were around “30 percent.”

Its basis, we can assume, was Meralco’s previous collection (read: profit) from its commercial/industrial customers before the lockdown. Without argument, commercial, industrial and other businesses are the biggest consumers of electricity– and source of income for Meralco.

Although our discussion shifted to the Senate’s proposed “invitation” (again) for Meralco to explain the basis of their billing for their “residential” clients (read: the more than 6 million household customers like you and me) for the May and June billing period, Sen. Imee’s remark struck a suspicious chord from other listeners of my radio program.

For indeed, it is not farfetched to suspect that in its effort to maintain its target profit margin for the year—whatever the percentage is—Meralco, the wily and untrustworthy company that it is known to be all these years—is now “offsetting” its 30 percent losses from its commercial clients to us, the residential customers.

This is entirely not a wild guess considering that Meralco is really finding it hard to explain—convincingly—that the May and June billings were the result of their “actual meter reading.”

For indeed, how can a customer suddenly consume electricity that is twice, thrice and even more in just one month (the June billing in particular) when compared from his  “average” consumption even before the pandemic?

In fairness also to Meralco, it is now imperative for Malacañang to order the ERC to look into this suspicion of Meralco “passing the buck” of its losses from one customer group to another, if only to clear the air of doubt for all concerned.

Senate Committee on Energy chair, Sen. Sherwin Gatchalian, who also admitted to seeing his average monthly bill of P6,000 suddenly shooting up to more than P18,000 in one month, had correctly summed up the people’s sentiment:

Meralco’s customers are willing to pay but this does not mean paying for consumption that is “unexplainable” and for us, “unjustifiable.”

For its part, the ERC can take this issue (again) of excessive billing by Meralco during this period of pandemic by stopping the practice of “babying” this oligarch-owned company by merely accepting as gospel truth all of Meralco’s submissions to the Commission.

In other words, the ERC should launch an honest-to-goodness independent audit of Meralco in particular, and all the power distributors in general.

For how can the public expect that it is not getting a “pakitang tao” investigation, in short, a fraud of an investigation by the ERC, if it is content in accepting, ‘hook, line and sinker,’ so to speak, everything that Meralco said and submitted?

For the Senate, it should likewise do the same—to also stop swallowing, hook, line and sinker, everything that this company tell them. Its “book of accounts” should be forced open.

To stress, if our national leaders and the authorities are indeed sincere in alleviating the suffering of our people because of the massive dislocation and disruption that COVID-19 have caused, they should seriously consider the suspicion that in Meralco’s effort to offset its 30 percent profit loss from its commercial customers, it has heartlessly targeted for wholesale fleecing its residential customers.

If it is necessary to “extract” the truth from Meralco by forcibly opening its book of accounts or accounting ledgers, so be it. This is long overdue, by the way.

At the end of my interview, Sen. Imee also bared one of “life’s lessons” that his father, former Pres. Ferdinand Marcos, had repeatedly reminded them: “Never miss a good crisis.”

For indeed, a crisis presents not only problems and challenges to any leader. More importantly, a crisis is also an opportunity– to correct past omissions, to correct past mistakes and to correct past injustices.

And in this instance, an opportunity has been presented to our leaders to lay bare the hidden operations and practices of Meralco that have contributed immensely to the poverty of Filipinos. Panahon na para “hubaran” ang Meralco, tama ba, mga kabayan?

The only question remaining is, is there anyone out there in the Senate and in the Palace willing to rise to the occasion for the benefit of our people?

Abangan!