Meralco's obfuscation

DIE HARD III
Herman Tiu Laurel
6/10/2005



The nation is embroiled in the GMA-Garcy tapes mess but there are vital issues that will persist and require resolution even after GMA and her cheating cohorts are gone. One of these persistent issues will be the Meralco thievery that is going on everyday and which we will have to resolve if the country is to surmount this scam that’s sapping the lifeblood out of our economy. Take Elpi Cuna’s last letter-to-the-editor attempting to muddle the issue, insisting on inputting the transmission charge to the generations charge. That’s what Meralco spokesman Elpi Cuna says is banana-to-banana.

I enjoin our readers to review their Meralco bill and look for a separate charge for Meralco’s transmission charge. There is none. That is because the function of power transmission is solely the responsibility of Transco and covered by a franchise. If, as Elpi Cuna says in his letter, Meralco is inputting a transmission charge to its generation charge then that will constitute a violation and amounts to double charging the power consumers. Elpi Cuna’s letter now allows us to raise the question with the ERC and maybe file a charge against Meralco for the double burden they place on power consumers.

Take a look at your Meralco bill again, note the transmission charge is costed at P 0.8345/kWh and not what Elpi Cuna states in his letter of P 1.5549/kWh and which he attributes to Napocor. Where did Elpi Cuna get that figure? I tried averaging the figure between what Cuna claims to be the Napocor transmission cost from Transco and what he claims is Meralco’s transmission charge, what I could get is P 1.1060/kWh. If we assume that what Meralco claims to be its own transmission charge is inputted to the transmission charge on our bills it would be 55% of the charge and larger than Napocor still.

In our analysis with Nasecore and other consumer protection groups a point arose: Meralco petitions for rate increases with the ERC are invariably only for generation charge, no transmission charge included. Has Elpi Cuna opened a can of worms for Meralco? Does Elpi Cuna mean that Meralco is illegally charging us a transmission fee of its own which no law or regulation allows them to do? We will be addressing this matter to the ERC too, which is too often ignorant of Meralco’s transgressions until Nasecor and consumer groups raise the issues.

Cuna continues to insist he sees bananas and compares them with bananas, i.e. purchased power cost with purchased power cost; but doesn’t he know that the EPIRA law already unbundled that cost and broken it down to its components, and that’s why we have such a long billing list enumerating the different separate and distinct charges. Or maybe Meralco is violating the EPIRA by secretly inputting their transmission cost, I wouldn’t put it past them. Maybe Cuna is going bananas or maybe he is already afflicted with Parkinson's or Alzheimer's for, as Nasecore texted to us:

“D understanding of Elpi Cuna of purchase power cost is the one prior to EPIRA where NPC rate was a combination of generation and transmission. Dats how he understands their IPP rates. He is not aware of the unbundled rates.” Maybe this is really why Cuna has been reticent in the past, he just doesn’t know the issues anymore. I, however, was just trying to be polite when I described him as reticent because I have met him before and with his booming voice he is far from reserved. In the past, he has actually hidden behind the petticoat of Ivanna de la Pena and others."

To Meralco and Cuna: generation is orange and transmission is banana. Only orangutans can fail to see the difference. You are obfuscating because you hope to muddle it enough to get away with it. With the help of selfless consumer advocates we will continue to expose you. With the politicians and ERC members in your control you obfuscate, change PPA to GRAM and then AGRAM; you changed RORB (Return On Rate Base) to WACC (Weighted Average Cost of Capital) and PBR (Performance Based Rating) to allow the increase from 8% to 12% and now to 15.5%.

Elpi Cuna and his master at Meralco are the incorrigible misleaders of the public, that’s why they exerted all efforts to control media from the start of their return from exile. From there they’ve had virtual control of the power to blackout certain vital truths from society’s mind, such as how they reacquired Meralco with Cory Aquino’s support by swindling the taxpayers. How they wrested the water operations from MWSS, plundered it with foreign partners, and now leave the taxpayer with the debt. How they have again a sweetheart deal in the NLEX.

Obfuscation is also Malacañang’s damage control on the GMA-Garcy tapes, but all in vain as GMA has absolutely no credibility with the public and the international community anymore. We should watch out for the others muddling the issues hoping to insert themselves after GMA falls. These are those calling for GMA’s resignation or abdication as that would legitimize succession from illegitimate 2004 elections. To restore sanity to the country we just have to go back and resume the Constitutional clock that stopped on January 20, 2001, 12.17p.m. when GMA was illegally sworn in.

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