Meralco asked to explain ‘unusual spike’ in power bills

FILE: Meralco (López) Building along Ortigas Avenue, Pasig, Metro Manila. (Photo By Lainecedillo/Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0)

MANILA – A party-list lawmaker on Friday asked the Manila Electric Company (Meralco) to provide the House Committee on Energy a detailed explanation on the “unusual spike” in the electric bills of their consumers.

PBA Rep. Jericho Nograles, the panel’s vice-chair, said he has received several complaints from consumers that their bill has tripled for the duration of the enhanced community quarantine.

He said that Meralco needs to properly explain in detail what prompted the spike as he noted that power cost should even go down at this point because of the continued decrease of oil prices in the world market

“There’s a brewing concern that’s been hot on the internet regarding issues and complaints on the spiking reading and billings, I would like to advise you to send our information to the committee as well as to the public to answer these comments and at least you can address that, ” Nograles said.

“Medyo mahirap na ngayon (It’s really difficult now) and under this situation, we have to be more sensitive to a more sensitive public,” he added.

The House Power Bloc, meanwhile, said that according to the electric cooperatives, there have been no actual readings in some areas and the averaging method was implemented as approved by the Energy Regulatory Commission.

“There was no doubling or tripling of power bill(s) for those averaged bills. Should there be such cases, member-consumer-owners (MCOs) are advised to inform the EC for validation,” the group said.

“However, there are some MCOs whose bill(s) may have doubled or tripled due to the actual increase of power consumption considering that they stayed home and used electronically powered gadgets and appliances for more hours than the usual like electric fans and air conditioning units,” the group added.