THE Energy Regulatory Commission (ERC) has so far counted 12 distribution utilities (DUs) under evaluation for possible violations of its advisories on issuing bills during the quarantine months.
The commission earlier revealed it received more than 47,000 consumer complaints on billings in the past months since the pandemic-induced lockdown started mid-March.
“From consumer complaints that we received, we have 12 DUs for evaluation,” ERC Spokesperson Floresinda B. Digal said in a message, without disclosing those utilities.
When asked for full disclosure of said complaints, the Philippine Rural Electric Cooperatives Association (Philreca) in a statement said the ERC divulged about 52 complaints involving 34 electric cooperatives.
Most of these complaints were presumed to pertain to billing concerns, while a few were about power interruptions.
The group, which extended its hands to aid the agency in calling out the attention of concerned utilities, said the involved cooperatives were already apprised of those grievances. Still, they are waiting for the full details of said complaints to resolve them.
In easing bill shocks, Philreca said electric cooperatives are still conducting information campaign explaining the reasons why their customers incurred increases in their consumption over the quarantine months.
“In addition to the quarantine restrictions that happened during the months of March until now, these past few months are historically the period when consumption increases due to the summer season,” it said.
Recently, the ERC ordered those utilities who have failed to comply with its advisories during the quarantine period to pay back customers of some collected bill portions. These are the feed-in-tariff allowance (FiT-All), which collection was suspended in March and April, and the universal charge-environmental charge, which was not supposed to be collected starting May.
Power distributors are also tasked to refund payments to customers who are overbilled and those who have fully paid their March-June arrears but who intend to pay them on an installment basis. — Adam J. Ang
