By Juan Escandor Jr.
NAGA CITY—A House committee concerned with Bicol development tackled the problem of a beleaguered power co-op in Camarines Sur with a recommendation for its privatization, a party-list representative revealed.
Ako Bicol Party-list Rep. Rodel Batocabe, chair of House Committee on Bicol Recovery, said that in the last meeting of the committee with Bicol solons as members, they discussed the problem of Camarines Sur III Electric Cooperative (Casureco III), Inc. and that one option recommended is to privatize it to avoid power outtage in its coverage area.
Batocabe described the House Committee on Bicol Recovery as “like a regional development council in Congress” with oversight function over national government agencies in Bicol on how the budgets are spent and monitors their performance.
He added the Bicol Recovery committee is also tasked to find ways and means to look for possible measures to problems confronting the region.
Batocabe said the take-over of SMEC of Casureco III is being considered to spare the member-consumers from brownout or blackout because it has no capacity to pay its debts.
But Iriga Mayor Ronald Felix “Gang-gang” Alfelor opts for concessionaire on partial privatization contract rather than total privatization like the case of Albay Electric Cooperative (Aleco), which had been taken over by power firm San Miguel Energy Corp. (SMEC) after it failed to pay its billions of pesos debt.
Alfelor, former president of Casureco III before being elected mayor of Iriga City in 2013, said the National Electrification Administration (NEA) was informed about the option of contracting to a private concessionaire the management and operation of CasurecoIII.He said it must be different from the Aleco model even though the Casureco III also owes power bills worth hundreds of millions pesos from SMEC which ordered power cut off for one week December last year.
Alfelor said the bidding for Casureco III’s management and operational concession must be open and not only for SMEC.
He said entrusting the management and operation of Casureco III is the only option he sees for the power co-op to move efficiently because of mismanagement.
“Maski po an NEA nasasakitan man po..pirang beses na po sinda nag parabalik-balik. Talagang nasasakitan na sinda, kin sain ite-trace, ta gabos po. Nahihiling ninda gabos po tinatakpan, nagtatahoban ta. So nagluluwas po na talagang gabos igwa anomalya, gabos po nagpoprotektaran.”
(Even the NEA is finding it hard… how many times they have to come back. It’s really very difficult for them where to trace all these. They are seeing that they cover each other. So it exposes that all of them have anomalies. All of them are protecting each other.)
The Bicol Mail tried to get the side of Casureco III about Alfelor’s allegation that there are employees who have established their own collection turfs, instead of the official collector.
Fernando Turiano, the former spokesperson of Casureco III, said he cannot now speak in behalf of the power co-op because he had been removed from the spokesperson designation.
Turiano said the OIC general manager Minnie Colina directly answers questions regarding the Casureco III but the phone in her office was not available when the Bicol Mail called Wednesday.
But he said nothing has changed with the situation of Casureco III still in dire situation.
When asked what his reaction on the take-over of SMEC and privatization of Casureco III, Turiano said he is sure the employees here will oppose.
NEA has assigned its personnel from Manila, Efren Gongon, to act as project supervisor Casureco III.
Turiano last month revealed NEA granted Casureco III P40M loan which was paid to SMEC that he said reduced its outstanding debt of power bills to P22M.
Early Dec. last year, the NGCP cut-off for one week the power supply of Casureco III after its outstanding power bills payable to SMEC reached P89M.
Casureco III distributes electric power to Iriga City and the towns of Baao, Buhi, Bato, Balatan, Bula, and Nabua of the fifth district of Camarines Sur servicing 68,000 member-consumers.
Turiano said Casureco III has barely reduced its outstanding debt of more than P700M to National Grid Corporation of the Philippines (NGCP), Power Sector Assets and Liabilities Management Corp. (PSALM), and NEA.
Casureco III must pay SMEC P3M/day for its arrears and current power supply payments until Feb. 2014 or else the power supply will be cut off again in the entire fifth district with more than 300,000 people.
A Department of Energy (DOE) study on the financial situation of Casureco III, DOE Director Rino Abad found out that the administrative expenses are way beyond the required standard.
Abad showed that the “excess of customer and administrative cost per employee” ranged from a minimum of P9M to maximum of P13M, from Jan. to Aug. last year, that is, the number of employees was more than the ideal ratio of 1:350.
For example, in Jan. last year the ideal number of employees was 141 but the actual average number of employees was 251 at the cost of more than P9M.
The systems loss that hovered above 20 percent for the past years, of which only 13 percent are allowed charged to consumers, Casureco III absorbed tens of millions of pesos of losses every year. For example, in 2007, Casureco III absorbed at least P48M in losses because the 27 percent cost of systems loss ran at P94M while the cost allowed collected from consumers amounted to P46M.