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WHAT goes around, comes around. When the president of the Government
Service Insurance System (GSIS) began haranguing Manila Electric Co.
(Meralco) for its lack of transparency in how it conducts its
business, we welcomed this long-needed attention into how consumer
welfare is served—or jettisoned—at a time when the public is
faced with rising prices of nearly everything—from food to oil
and, yes, electricity.
The Joint Congressional Power Commission (JCPC)
held an inquiry into the matter last week, and we said, finally,
legislators are putting taxpayers’ money into good use by looking
into an issue that is of utmost importance to the public.
In the JCPC hearing conducted last Monday, we
learned how the electricity sector has been—in the words of a
senator—”fleecing” the public. For starters, the Lopez-led
utility has been charging its so-called systems losses on us.
At least one of the distributor’s affiliates
has been benefiting from its ties to Meralco by supplying electric
meters. While such transactions are allowed under law, the GSIS
head, as well as members of the JCPC, wondered whether the utility
has been observing acceptable standards in its dealings with sister
companies.
We also learned that the government is partly to
blame for the expensive electricity. State-owned National
Transmission Corp. has been arbitrarily setting rates on its
customers, the generation companies and distributors, which in turn
pass on these charges to their clients.
The supposed guardian of consumer interest, the
Energy Regulatory Commission, appears to have sanctioned this rip
off.
Even legislators, including the members of the
JCPC, have blood in their hands, since they passed into law a number
of measures that made electricity a very costly public service—if
we could still call it a service!
The executive, of course, pushed for the passage
of these measures, including how the web of charges in the
electricity sector would be distributed and passed on to us.
In short, there is plenty of blame to go around.
From all the above, it appears the government helped create this
mess. It has its work cut out for itself.
Double standards
AMID all this unprecedented disclosure,
something is terribly amiss about the recent public scrutiny into
Meralco.We find it worrisome that the
utility’s self-proclaimed persecutor is demanding transparency at
the distributor, but is less than candid about how this whole affair
is affecting GSIS, a pension fund that, last we checked, was
established for government workers.
The fund’s president after all used its
members’ money to buy a fourth of Meralco. Our computation shows
GSIS has lost about P1 billion on paper, after the utility’s share
price fell on the heels of the recent publicity.
Despite our reporter’s attempts to ask for
information on how his crusade against the utility’s management is
affecting the pension fund’s financial results, the GSIS president
has refused to disclose any information, ordering his staff not to
answer our questions. So much for double standards. There is more
here than meets the eye.
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