SURIGAO del Norte Rep. Robert Ace Barbers on Sunday challenged the Manila Electric Company (Meralco) to reduce its profit margins to show it is one with the nation during the time of a pandemic.
“If they want to help the country and its people, they should also look into the reduction of their (profit) margins. Ika nga, para sa bayan (As we say, it’s for the country),” Barbers said in a text message.
Meralco has attributed the increase in its May bills to the rise in consumption of electricity because of the enhanced community quarantine (ECQ), saying consumers who stayed home used more their appliances that consume more power, like air conditioners and refrigerators.
Meralco spokesman Joe Zaldarriaga has said the latest bill reflects the “full impact” of the ECQ which forced Filipinos to stay home, while the bills for March and April were based on the average consumption for the previous three months — from December 2019 to February 2020. The adjustments for the March and April bills were then reflected in the May statement which may be settled on a staggered basis in four months.
The company suspended meter reading activities during the lockdown that started in March, as part of measures to protect its employees from contracting COVID-19 and resumed on May 6 for residential customers.
On Friday last week, the Energy Regulatory Commission said is has directed all power distributors to conduct “actual meter readings” and issue new bills that reflect the “actual consumption and the corresponding amount due.” The ERC said the revised bills should be issued not later than June 8, except when lockdown restrictions in certain areas would prohibit actual meter reading.
Barbers said Meralco “should send a recomputed billing for April since they admitted anyway that it was a lapse on their part.” Barbers said Meralco also made a killing when it charged a P47 convenience fee charged to customers who used their mobile app and website to pay bills covering the ECQ.
“I just realized that all this time they’ve been charging fees that may seem minimal and ignorable to the consumers, but in totality will amount to a huge income for Meralco,” he said.
He urged Meralco to review “if there are still useless charges that they pass on to consumers that they can easily forego.”
“Then they should tell us already and let it be part of their corporate social responsibility (CSR) efforts,” Barbers said.
The utility company admitted last Friday that for April, only the meters of one percent of its customers were read during the ECQ period.
“That’s the point. We want Meralco to be transparent in their charges and to conduct actual meter readings so that we can be assured that there is accurate basis for the electricity bill that must be paid by their customers,” Marinduque Rep. Lord Allan Velasco told Meralco representatives during the Joint Congressional Energy Commission’s (JCEC) hearing last Friday.
He said many consumers were shocked when they found out how high their bills are. He even showed a sample of a billing statement which reached over P30,000 despite averaging about P10,000 for two months prior to the pandemic.
