PRESS RELEASE
20
January 2014
While politicians and businessmen have joined President
Aquino for the National Day of Prayer and Solidarity to the victims of natural
and man-made calamities, workers in Metro Manila belonging to the labor
coalition Nagkaisa, trooped to the Supreme Court to seek relief and ultimate
deliverance from unjust power rate hikes.
The fifteen (15) justices, also known as ‘The gods of
Faura’, were set to hear oral arguments tomorrow on several petitions seeking
injunctions to Meralco’s P4.15/kWh rate increase. Prime in the agenda to resolve are questions
on whether or not the Energy Regulatory Commission (ERC) committed grave abuse
of discretion in approving Meralco rate hike; whether or not automatic rate
adjustment is valid; and whether or not the generation sector is not a public
utility and therefore beyond regulation by ERC, among others.
“We pray that the justices deliver us from a decade-old
fraud and industry blackmail,” said Nagkaisa in a statement released during their
picket at the gates of the Supreme Court building. The group was referring to
frauds committed under the Electric Power Industry Reform Act (EPIRA),
including the latest allegations on collusion and market abuse among power
firms and the latter’s threat of rotating blackouts had they fail to collect
rate increases.
Nagkaisa asserted that since the enactment of EPIRA which
led to the deregulation of the generation of generation sector, privatization
of Napocor assets, the creation of spot market, and the introduction of
performance-based regulation, fraud became the norm in the power industry as
shown by rising prices and cartelization.
“It is no secret that owners of power firms, the so-called
Voltage 5 (Aboitiz, Lopez, San Miguel, Henry Sy, and Pangilinan) have been
earning record high profits from record high tariffs of their power-related
firms,” said Nagkaisa.
The labor coalition recalled that lowering the cost of power
was the pledge of the Arroyo administration when it prodded Congress to pass
the EPIRA upon assumption to power 13 years ago today.
Nagkaisa explained further that since 2008, many of its
convenor groups have attended, submitted position papers, and argued against
the ills of EPIRA before committee hearings of both houses of Congress,
including those conducted by the powerful Joint Congressional Power Committee
(JCPC). Yet no actions were made to
address those concerns.
It likewise chided the Executive for
peddling the line that the only choice for now is between expensive power, or
having no power at all.
“We hope the Supreme Court brings light to a dark decade of
power hikes, naked greed, and blackmail amid unreliability of power supply,”
concluded Nagkaisa!
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