Ilonggo tycoons hauled to court for ‘power pilferage’

By Francis Allan L. Angelo

Several prominent businesspersons in Iloilo City were indicted for alleged electricity theft, according to a top official of MORE Electric and Power Corp., the city’s power distributor.

Niel Parcon, Corporate Planning and Regulatory head of MORE Power, confirmed to Daily Guardian that at least five businessmen in the city will be on trial for violation of Republic Act No. 7832 (Anti-Pilferage of Electricity and Theft of Electric Transmission Lines/Materials Act of 1994).

The cases were filed following MORE Power’s active campaign against power pilferers or jumpers in a bid to lower systems losses and improve distribution facilities and services in the city.

Parcon said they were surprised that even rich and prominent people in the city would resort to power pilferage.

“That’s true. Actually, we were surprised because we thought all the while that only the poor resort to power pilferage. Since you have no money, you will just steal electricity. When we took over, we were surprised that the worse pilferers were those with capacity to pay,” Parcon told Daily Guardian on Air last Friday.

Parcon said it is a wrong notion that power pilferage is not really theft because the perceived victim are the rich investors of distribution utilities (DUs).

“It’s wrong to tell people that power pilferage is not really theft. It’s still a crime and unfair to both consumers and investors. They thought stealing electricity is okay because the victim are the rich ones but it’s still theft of electricity which is a crime,” he added.

A lawyer handling the cases confirmed the indictment but declined to name the accused until the cases are formally filed in court.

Parcon said their ongoing campaign against jumpers or power thieves improved MORE Power’s systems loss from a high of 31 percent to 9 percent, which is on the level of other private DUs and even lower than some electric cooperatives.

“There has been significant improvement because of the work of our full-time apprehension teams. It helped make the distribution systems safe as jumpers are open and susceptible to fires. And it will further lower power rates if we also lower our systems loss,” he added.

Systems loss refers to electricity lost during transmission or distribution to consumers.

There are two types of system loss. One is technical loss arising from the characteristics of electrical equipment and materials in the physical delivery of electric energy, including conductor loss and transformer core loss.

Technical losses are inherent in the delivery of electric service—it is not possible to provide electric service without the distribution system incurring some form of energy loss. A proportion of the energy being delivered will always be dissipated as heat and noise (psme.org.ph).

The other is non-technical loss caused by actions external to the power system and consists primarily of electricity theft or pilferage. These losses are highly dependent on the country’s socio-economic situation, and thus, not entirely within the utility’s control.

The campaign against power thieves and the easing of applications for new meters also saw an increase in MORE Power consumers.

Parcon said that when they took over actual operations more than a year ago, the consumer base was around 61,000 to 62,000. A year after, the number ballooned to more than 83,000 residential and commercial consumers.

He said that the number of consumers could go up after MORE Power managed to lower rates by more than P3 in the July billing.

“A portion of consumers who pilfer power will be prompted to apply for legitimate connections because there is no more reason for them to do so. Some of them steal power because they cannot afford expensive power. But our theory is that it will be easier to be a regular consumer if electricity is affordable. But you cannot avoid that other people will steal electricity. Those who were indicted for pilferage are already taking advantage even if we have lower power rates,” Parcon said.