In line with the State of the Nation Address (SONA) of President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. to amend the Electric Power Industry Reform Act (EPIRA) R.A. 9136, Power Watch Negros Secretary Wennie Sancho, along with other consumer advocacy groups joined the call for the overhaul of EPIRA.
In a press statement, Sancho stressed that EPIRA was supposed to achieve two things – to reduce power cost and assure efficient power supply, it was supposed to create true competition and thus deregulation to lower rates.
However, after more than twenty years since its implementation in 2001, EPIRA has no effective solutions to the problems besetting the power industry. Moreover, without efficient regulators, strict accountability mechanisms for inefficiency and abusive behaviors, and strong limitations on concentration and cross-ownership, it is impossible for EPIRA to bring about greater efficiency and better services for consumers.
The statement said that EPIRA is clearly a failed policy that needs to be overhauled. It is time to conduct a comprehensive assessment of its failure to meet the promised objectives. An amendment should come up with solutions that will hopefully put an end to the yearly power outages and the many ailments of the power industry.
The public needs the protection of an alert regulator. The ERC has an obligation to pursue its mandate to ensure that providers of power are viable and that consumers are charged with fair and reasonable rates. A significant amendment of EPIRA is to prohibit the passing on the cost of system loss to consumers. Consumers should only pay for what they receive. In purchasing other products, consumers only pay for what they receive. However, in paying for electricity, consumers are charged even for electricity lost, whether through its physical delivery or through pilferage. Distribution utilities should be shouldering the cost of system losses, Sancho said.
The Energy Regulatory Commission (ERC) and the Department of Energy (DOE) should ensure that power producers are penalized with fines and revocation of certificate for compliance and/or endorsement for their protracted and unjustified outages. It is imperative that erring generation companies are slapped with appropriate sanctions for gross incompetence in failing to provide a crucial service in the middle of a power crisis, he said.
In aid of legislation, Congress should amend EPIRA to implement reforms related to the improvement in the management of electricity communication lines to address issues on safety as well as the ban on cross-ownership on distribution utilities and power generation plants. ERC should retire unreliable and obsolete coal plants that have been experiencing recurring outages on an annual basis. As power plants get older, even with planned maintenance periods afforded to them, they cannot be as efficient as they were before, Sancho said.
Above all, the President of the Philippines, upon the recommendation of the DOE, should be granted the power to issue a declaration of electric power crisis in times of critically low electricity supply or unusually high electricity prices, the statement concluded.*
