An activist priest in Quezon province urged President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. to stand by his promise to remove the controversial system loss charges from electricity bills and not yield to pressure from power industry players opposing the proposal.
‘Millions of Filipinos bear the burden of exorbitant electricity costs every day. It is only fair to abolish charges that do not directly reflect consumers’ actual electricity consumption,’ Fr. Warren Puno, director of the Ministry of Ecology of the Diocese of Lucena, said in a statement on Thursday, July 30.
‘We therefore urge the president not to waver or be influenced by the statements of distribution utilities such as Meralco. If the administration is truly serious about providing relief to the public, now is the time to prove it through concrete action,’ he said.
Puno issued the statement after Malacañang explained on Wednesday that the government was still studying the implementation of one of the President’s most applauded promises during his State of the Nation Address (Sona) on Monday – the removal of system loss charges from consumers’ electricity bills.
In his Sona, Marcos called on Congress to amend the Electric Power Industry Reform Act (Epira) to eliminate system loss charges passed on to consumers.
‘It’s time to stop passing the burden of system loss to consumers. This is being passed on to consumers and even subjected to value-added tax. System loss is not the consumers’ fault,’ the president said in Filipino.
System loss refers to electricity delivered through the distribution system that is not reflected as transmitted, resulting from technical losses and non-technical losses such as electricity theft. As standard practice, every consumer shoulders the cost of this loss.
Palace press officer Claire Castro said the proposal is still being studied to ensure that removing the charges would not have unintended consequences for electricity distribution utilities.
Also on Wednesday, businessman Manuel V. Pangilinan, chairman of the Manila Electric Co. (Meralco), balked at Marcos’ proposal, saying the financial burden of absorbing system losses would be ‘too big’ for the power industry.
Meralco is the country’s biggest power distributor, which counts about 8.3 million consumers. ‘So, who’s going to pay for that? The industry? It’s going to cost tens of billions of pesos. Will you not survive?’ Pangilinan said.
‘Malacañang’s statement that it is still studying the impact of removing system loss charges is deeply concerning. The administration’s commitment already appears to be weakening,’ Puno said.
‘Millions of Filipinos bear the burden of exorbitant electricity costs every day. It is only fair to abolish charges that do not directly reflect consumers’ actual electricity consumption,’ the priest said.
He called on Marcos to certify as urgent the bills seeking to abolish system loss charges and to work closely with Congress to ensure their immediate passage into law.
He added that the true measure of a successful Sona ‘is not the appeal of its promises, but the courage and determination to turn those promises into reality