A sit-down with the graduates

By Herbert Vego

I RECENTLY had the opportunity to sit down with fresh Mass-Com graduates from the West Visayas State University.  They wanted me for a two cents’ worth of advice.

One of them asked whether working for a newspaper was fulfilling.

“I took up Journalism more than 50 years ago,” I candidly answered. “Money was not even a motivation.  It was simply my passion for writing that drove me to the print media. It began in high school when I passed the exam for staff members of our high school paper. I became its news editor.”

Temporary setbacks could intervene, I explained, detailing how my late father had tried to suppress my dream by asking me to take up Veterinary Medicine instead because veterinarians were very few, and so could get profitably employed.

I knew Dad had proven his point.  But to make the long story short, he eventually gave in to my choice.

I advised the students to push through with radio, TV or newspaper work, but only if their heart is rally in it.  Otherwise, they would fail to succeed.

I told them a little story: When I was taking up AB-Journalism at MLQ University, most of my classmates could not write according to the rules. Thus, it was not surprising that our instructor would often remind us, “If you can’t even write simple news, you have no right to be here.”

Now I can count on my ten fingers those classmates who made it as pen pushers. But some of them had found non-writing jobs with better pay. One ended up self-employed, publishing a weekly tabloid.

I asked the new graduates, “Of what good is a diploma when its possessor does not function as expected?”

Asked whether there is money in writing, I simply answered, “For a successful journalist, there is. Otherwise, I would not have stayed here beyond retirement age.”

-oOo-

ONLY 15 CENTAVOS FOR MORE POWER

Did you know that for every one peso that Iloilo City consumers pay for the electric bill in the current month, only 15 centavos will go to the city’s distribution utility (DU), MORE Electric and Power Corp.?

Wow, that’s a big leap from the standard way of dividing the pie.  Normally, the distribution utilities get 25%.

But “15” was the surprising percentage revealed to this writer by the firm’s vice-president for corporate planning, Niel V. Parcon, in the program “Tribuna sang Banwa” on Aksyon Radyo last Sunday.

He could not be wrong. A UP graduate and a CPA-board topnotcher (No. 10 in the October 1992 licensure examination for accountants), he is responsible for determining the most competitive power rates.

Like MORE President Roel Z. Castro, he wants to always find out the lowest possible price without losing. Indeed, for 14 months, the company had billed its patrons the cheapest energy in the Philippines.

Wow, that’s a big leap from the standard way of dividing the pie.  Normally, the distribution utilities get 25%, as this writer had gathered from another radio program.

In a previous issue of this paper, I reiterated the usual division of the power pie, giving the distribution utility 26 percent, while the power generator gets at least 51%. The National Grid Corporation of the Philippines (NGCP) gets 9% for transmission.  The other charges are for the government-imposed taxes, system’s loss and universal charges.

Why, then, do different utilities – including the three branches of Iloilo Electric Cooperative (ILECO) – impose different prices per kilowatt-hour? Take note that while MORE Power now collects P12.48 per kWh., neighbor ILECO-1 charges P13.46.

Rather than quote Parcon verbatim, let me just say “kanya-kanyang diskarte” in local parlance.

For a bird’s eye-view, one reason is the choice of the power generator with which the DU has entered into a contract. Another is the kind of fuel that the generator uses. They charge different rates at different moments.

To reiterate, the average price of coal in the world market has suddenly jumped from US $60 to $405 per metric ton, indicating a 575%, allegedly due to the Russia-Ukraine war and the free fall  of the Philippine peso against the US dollar .

To sum it up, the practice of customers blaming the DU – say, MORE which collects only 15 centavos for every peso — for “excessive” billing is invalid. Since the DU doubles as “collecting agent,” it follows that the bulk of the amount charged goes to generation, transmission, system’s loss and minor payables.

-oOo-

GRAVEL HAULING, A GRAVE PROBLEM IN ANTIQUE

THERE is hardly a day when motorists could roll comfortably along the long and winding road connecting the provinces of Antique and Iloilo. Eroded and broken roads are either impassable or made “one way” alternately from both sides to allow reconstruction.

Except for damages incurred due to typhoons and earthquakes, the suspected culprits are the heavy trucks quarrying gravel from various rivers of the province to road-construction sites within the Antique, and onward to the towns of Iloilo.

The biggest “victim” is the Egaña bridge in the municipality of Sibalom, which collapsed after a loaded sand-and-gravel truck crossed last Monday.

Concerned Antiqueños have been asking the provincial government to regulate the entry of loaded heavy trucks along the dangerous points between central Antique and Iloilo but to no avail.

Must Antique’s politicians wait for fatal road accidents before catching the hard-headed haulers and favored contractors?

While they want tourists to come in, the latter would naturally avoid a place that is not within their comfort zone.

Sa aton-aton lang, ano abi hay may share of the pie kuno sanda.