AS our situation has started to ease up with most of the country, especially in Luzon, now under ‘general community quarantine,’ it has not brought any relief at all.
And how could it when the millions of customers of the (now) Pangilinan-controlled Manila Electric Company (MERALCO) has started to issue monthly consumption billings that they find as atrocious, excessive and truly ‘out of this world?’
The case of one MERALCO customer, a housewife from Sta. Rosa, Laguna, quoted by the Inquirer in its May 19, 2020 issue (‘Explain High Billings’) seems to sum up the public’s rage—her March bill of more than P7,000 shot up to more than P18,000 in her May billing—when MERALCO, with the ERC’s connivance, err, approval, resorted to “averaging” (or is it “guessing”) all of its customers’ actual consumption in lieu of actual meter reading.
For the June billing, Meralco, tongue in cheek we should say, claimed the amount reflects the “actual consumption” of its customers because this is based on the “actual meter reading” they did. Owws, really?
We are suspicious because in another instance, another Laguna MERALCO customer suddenly saw their household consumption shot up from more than 250 kWh to more than 600 kWh in one month (March to June billing period—you read it right. “March to June billing” when they paid for their consumption from March to May).
They asked, ‘How can a family of three suddenly consume more than 600 kWh in one month when they haven’t consumed more than 400 kWh in any month before the pandemic? Well, this should tell us what kind of “meter reading” MERALCO has been doing now.
In the same Inquirer report quoted above, ERC chair Agnes Devanadera claimed she has demanded from MERALCO to “explain” its high billings.
“We need to look into these consumers’ allegations… we required Meralco to submit to us data or information for us to validate the accuracy of their billing calculations,” the Inquirer further quoted Devanadera.
Now, over such a statement of concern for the public good, we would have praised Devanadera to high heavens. But wait.
In a report less than a week later by the Manila Bulletin, on May 23, 2020 (‘ERC orders MERALCO to issue new billings’), Devanadera was again quoted as telling the company to now start implementing the “the four- and six-month payment installment cycles” for its customers.
Translation? Even before the ERC has finished investigating the excessive billing complaints against MERALCO, it is already telling MERALCO to start collecting those same darn billings—but on “installment.”
And is not this ‘go-just-collect-and-damn-the-
“Mataas ba ang bill mo? Okay lang ‘yan, kasi puwede mo namang bayaran ng hulugan. Imbestigasyon? Wala na ‘yun,” is the message that both the ERC and MERALCO is now telling us.
To our mind, this is a shakedown no matter how gentle the ERC and MERALCO put it to us and which is more heartless given most people’s situation in this period of pandemic.
If all the ERC can do until now is serve the interest of Big Business and the Oligarchs in the power industry, then it is time for Pres. Duterte to shake up things over there—again.