Sunday, July 06, 2008 City power coop seeks members By Jane Cadalig
THE Baguio Electric Consumers Cooperative (Baelco), a group wanting to put up a separate power distribution utility for the city, is gearing up for a massive membership campaign to realize what its officers claim as a genuine cooperative.
Officials of Baelco are confident their efforts in putting up a distribution utility separate from the Benguet Electric Cooperative (Beneco) would bear positive fruits saying this is not hard to sell to electric consumers.
Beneco welcomed the move, saying Baelco's creation is a positive development as it would serve as a challenge for the existing power utility to work hard to ensure customer satisfaction.
"We respect their position and their right to establish a separate electric cooperative. We are in fact grateful Baelco was created because they serve as a challenge (for) us to always try our best to provide safe, quality, reliable and affordable electric service and the continuation of our rural electrification program," a Beneco statement said.
Baelco lawyers John Libiran and Edgar Avila said the clamor of electric consumers to have a distribution utility run by a genuine cooperative justifies the creation of Baelco.
How Baelco would run the proposed utility through the genuine cooperativism principle, complete with the patronage refunds and interests on shares, has yet to be completely outlined.
Martin Manodon of the Cooperative Development Authority said how these benefits would redound to consumers would be up to the decision of the members, or the general assembly, who are deemed the highest decision-making body in a cooperative.
The group is eyeing a membership of 60,000 for Baelco to realize its operations.
Baelco chairman Federico Balanag said several charges contained in the current bills, among them missionary charges, distribution loss charges and universal charges, will be removed if distribution is managed by a genuine coop, while maintaining transparency of operations.
These charges under Beneco's unbundled rates have earned the approval of the Energy Regulatory Commission before imposition.
Beneco meantime asked Baelco officials to sit down with them to discuss and share concepts or models of operation which would help improve operations of the distribution system, in the meantime Baelco has not yet acquired a franchise to operate.
The power cooperative, operating as a non-stock, non-profit entity, also advised Baelco officials to exercise more effort to learn the business of power distribution, saying the electric industry is a highly technical business imbued with public interest.
"Decisions made should be intelligent and relevant. Otherwise, the electric utility is doomed to fail," a Beneco official said.
"We lament the fact that several sectors are now full of ideas, but never raised the same during the times when Beneco was suffering from unpaid amortizations to the National Electrification Administration, unpaid bill to the National Transmission Corporation and unpaid power bills to the National Power Corporation or during the times when the collection efficiency of the cooperative was as low as 71.43 percent in 1989 and the systems loss was as high as 29.45 in 1992," the official added.
