PECO could have done MORE (pun intended)

By Herbert Vego

 

AS a power consumer, I agree with younger colleague Ted Aldwin Ong, who wrote in a recent article, “Perhaps the owner of More Power will be different.”

If Ong was hesitant in saying that, it was because of his own observation that “illegal connection of electricity is a complex and a multi-faceted issue: socio-political, cultural, moral, and economic. This underground industry is no petty crime. It is an intricately operated shadow livelihood with an established structure similar to narco-politics, if not a layer within the same or within a parallel network.”

Fortunately, MORE Electric and Power Corporation (MORE Power) has already shown itself capable of playing its role as the new power distributor in Iloilo City, succeeding Panay Electric Company (PECO) whose franchise expired on January 19, 2019.

But as the late actor and broadcaster Rod Navarro would have said while hitting his target, “Wala tayong masamang tinapay. Trabaho lang.”

It was a matter of media responsibility that this writer had repeatedly lambasted PECO for running short of customers’ expectations, one of which was to stop the proliferation of “jumpers” which divert stolen electricity to  “systems loss” charged to the paying customers.

PECO never succeeded in holding suspected thieves liable for violation of the anti-pilferage law (RA 7832) which is punishable by reclusion temporal (imprisonment of 12 years and 1 day to 20 years) or a fine ranging from P50,000 to P100,000 or both.

Will MORE Power succeed?

Well, MORE Power appears to be succeeding where PECO failed, having already filed criminal cases against ten suspected power pilferers – including a businessman, a barangay kagawad and a religious pastor.

While this corner has favored MORE Power over PECO during those days when they were fighting tooth and nail in legal fora over the constitutionality of the law (RA 11212) granting to the former the next 25-year franchise, it has never been our intention to malign the latter.

I believe that PECO could have renewed its legislative franchise had it not abused the trust and confidence of its clientele. Sayang talaga.

Complacency and seeming indispensability must have rendered its management insensitive to clients complaining of power outages, hazardous “spaghetti wirings”, outrageous power rates, wrong meter readings, power pilferage, overbilling and poor response to complaints.

Having been in business for 96 long years, PECO had no doubt made billions of pesos in profit and therefore in no danger of losing investments made. But as to whether it had lighted up the lives of most of its 65,000 customers, it’s a big no!

I once observed in a column, “Looking at its leaning lamp posts, spaghetti wirings and dangling ‘whatevers’ is like traveling back in time to the year 1923 when PECO’s first bulb lighted up.”

But there was a time when I thought PECO was picking up. It was the time when I noticed the absence of skyline cables between lamp posts at the Megaworld commercial complex.

I thought of thanking PECO for burying the wires underground until I learned that the electrical engineers and laborers of Megaworld had done it.

When I asked a PECO official why they could not modernize that way, he said, “It’s too expensive.”

Did that guy think there would be no need to invest further in the absence of threat to their monopoly?

Who could have expected that, for the first time, a new player would bid for the 25-year franchise?

Nobody had predicted that billionaire Enrique K. Razon would do it.

I was privy to a conflict between PECO and its own employees in the 1990s. I was living in the same house on Zamora St. with Enrique “Boy” Huyan, who was then president of the Panay Electric Company Employees and Workers Association (PECEWA). The company terminated him for leading a labor strike.

It was a blessing in disguise though; it paved the way for a higher position for him at the office of the mayor at Leon, Iloilo.

The entry of MORE Power has not deprived deserving PECO employees of continuity of work; they now constitute a big portion of the former’s workforce.

PECO itself stands to gain a whopping P481,842,450 as the “just compensation” collectible from MORE Power under RA 11212.

In fairness, PECO has bequeathed us Ilonggos with an unalterable piece of history that began with its establishment in the year 1923. Among its most prominent incorporators were shipping magnate Don Esteban De la Rama, Jose Ma. Arroyo (a former senator after whom the Arroyo Fountain in front of the capitol was named), lawyer Mariano Jalbuena, Emiliano Lizares, Jose Lopez-Vito, Modesto Ledesma, Marcos Alfaras, Jose Tiongco, Yap Seng, Eulogio Hernandez, Jose L. Jalbuena and Jose G. Paramos.

Four years later, they sold their shares of stock to Candelaria Ditching Cacho.  Since then, the Cacho family has dominated the corporation.

But as the old maxim goes, “Nothing is permanent except change.”