Published
By Myrna M. Velasco
For being at the
receiving end of criticisms, Energy Secretary Alfonso G. Cusi has reportedly
‘grounded’ energy officials on their propensity for frequent trips abroad,
including those classified as official travels.
According to insider
sources, the energy chief even cancelled all ‘applications for leave’ of energy
officials last December because all of them were needed to focus on
rehabilitation efforts at areas pummeled by typhoons Urduja and Vinta at that
time.
The Department of
Energy (DOE) had been thrown the caustic “Join DOE, see the world!” pun,
following stakeholders’ observations that every time they would seek schedules
for meeting with energy officials, they are often overseas.
Cusi had also gotten
strict on the telephone roaming bills of his Undersecretaries, Assistant
Secretaries and other subalterns as he mandated limits on how much they can
spend on phone bills while offshore.
D)E sources noted
though that phone usage of the previous administration had been comparatively
more abusive, that one former Undersecretary had to be reprimanded by former
Energy Secretary Jose Rene Almendras because of overseas phone bills exceeding
R100,000.
In this administration,
as part of the DOE’s “housekeeping rules”, Cusi is getting stern as to when
actions on pending matters shall be delivered.
As of January 2018, the
energy secretary declared that he would not want to see papers or documents on
his table dated before October 31, 2017 that had been ‘unresolved’ to-date.
“In all the processing
of our documents, all of our 2017 applications or documents needing approvals
or permitting should have been acted upon already,” Cusi said.
He added that “at the
end of January 2018, I will not attend to any document that is dated earlier
than October 2017.”
Cusi emphasized that
his forbidding instruction to energy officials had been: “you have to finish
all the work prior to October 2017. If not, I will not hesitate to burn all of
those papers in front of you and you will do a lot of explaining to me.”
Given pending matters
still needing action from the energy department, Cusi noted that he wants all
officials to be engaged and deliver on their assigned tasks. “We have to do our
work,” he stressed.
The DoE has yet to
issue guidelines on the modified contracting round for petroleum, finish the
implementing rules and regulations for Executive Order No. 30, approve the
transition plan for the Independent Market Operator (IMO) of the Wholesale
Electricity Spot Market (WESM), and also needs to intensify campaign as to the
cost impact as well as mitigating measures set under the Tax Reform for Acceleration
and Inclusion Act.
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