UNFAIR AND SWEEPING: PECO clears pole fire yarn; blames blazes on pilferage

By: Francis Allan L. Angelo

Panay Electric Company (PECO) countered “sweeping allegations” made by the Bureau of Fire Protection (BFP) in Iloilo City about the five pole fire incidents during the holidays.

“The BFP generally claimed that the five pole files were the fault of PECO, which is an unfair generalization and is obviously meant to discredit PECO,” stressed Marcelo Cacho, PECO head of Public Engagement and Government Affairs.

“It is true that the fires happened in poles that PECO owns but the incidents were brought about by other factors that are not of our doing,” Cacho added in a statement.

The BFP statement attributed pole fires to dilapidated and ageing wooden poles and electrical wires and overloaded transformers.

But Cacho clarified that “Poles cannot cause a fire and actually 97% of all PECO poles are already made of concrete.

He added that “the remaining 3% are being phased-out based on usability and we are applying outage management so as not to burden our customers also with multiple outages.”

Cacho also said that contrary to the BFP report, none of the pole fires it cited were caused by an overloaded transformer.

“And should there be an issue with the wires, we have protective devices in place to make sure power is cut to prevent damaging nearby property,” he noted.

PECO is the current power distributor in Iloilo and the company’s rival is the Razon-owned MORE Electric and Power Corp. (MORE) which is currently aiming to expropriate PECO’s distribution assets.

PECO also revealed that pilferage has been a major issue in its service area.

In fact, the firm has apprehended 201 persons caught pilfering power from Nov 13, 2019 to Jan 6, 2020 and confiscated 3.8 kilometers of lines used to pilfer power.

“These personalities were caught in cooperation and with the assistance of the Iloilo City police, along with the different barangays in the city,” Cacho noted.

“We have weekly planned operations with the police to aid in the apprehension of electricity pilferers as it is required by the law to have an officer of the law present when apprehending pilferers,” he added.

The PECO executive also assured that they installed protective devices to protect lives and properties in their service area.

“We would like to point out that with our current protective devices in place, the lives and properties of our valued consumers were never affected in all the fire incidents related to this matter not unless the fire comes from within the consumers’ structure already,” Cacho stressed.

“PECO has been trying its best to abide by the rules and regulations of the ERC despite multiple external factors beyond our control. We communicated to the ERC that should they need further clarification on certain matters, we are very much willing to cooperate as we have been doing so consistently,” he added.