Shahanis seek TRO vs Panelco rate hike

Business Mirror

04 Feb 2014 

 

Written by Orly Guirao / Correspondent

URDANETA CITY, Pangasinan—Former Sen. Leticia Ramos-Shahani and her son Pangasinan Provincial Board Member Ranjit Shahani have teamed up with a consumer federation in Pangasinan to stop the new power hike the Pangasinan Electric Cooperative III (Panelco III) is proposing to impose on the 200,000 residential power users in Pangasinan.

The mother-and-son tandem, along with Rogelio Arciosa, vice president of the Federation of Consumers Association of Eastern Pangasinan, filed on Monday before the Regional Trial Court (RTC) here a petition for injunction, with a motion asking for a temporary restraining order (TRO) in an attempt to stop the power firm from imposing and collecting the new rates.

They called the new rates “arbitrary, incredible and unjust.”

“The power-rate hike caught us dumbfounded and flabbergasted,” the Shahanis declared in their petition.

Panelco III increased its rate by P5 per kilowatt-hour (kWh), triggering a sharp climb to P15.4 per kWh, higher than what Manila Electric Co. was supposed to impose on its consumers, according to the petition.

The younger Shahani assailed the power-rate hike, which took effect in December last year as “whimsical as it was made without due process.”

Shahani, who co-authored the Electric Power Industry Reform Act (Epira) of 1996 when he was a member of the House of Representatives, said the Panelco board of directors “deliberately tampered with the Epira’s implementing rules and regulation to gain more profits instead of raising the quality of service to its consumers.”

The petition said the Panelco board approved on December 10, 2013, a resolution adopting a staggered payment scheme for the rate increase.

But the Shahanis contended the payment scheme “was never followed and the power firm decided to collect the hiked rate payments at one time.”

“The decision to raise rates was implemented without the benefit of a public hearing, contrary to the requirement of the law,” the provincial official said in a news briefing following the filing of the petition before the Court.

The Energy Regulatory Commission (CRC) was also named respondent in the petition.

In filing the petition for injunction, the petitioners invoked the “court’s power of judicial review under Section 1, Article VIII of the 1987 Constitution to determine whether or not there has been grave abuse of discretion amounting to lack or excess of jurisdiction” on the part of ERC.

Lawyer Nelson Palaris, lead counsel for the petitioners, said during the news briefing that Panelco failed to notify its consumers and the various local legislative bodies within the service area about the power-rate increase. Palaris said Panelco could have also met the requirement by publishing the notice in a newspaper of general circulation, an obligation required of the power firm as per the implementing rules and regulations of the Epira law.

The public notice, Palaris said, serves as “basis for the consumers to file an appeal against any provisional increase that the ERC may grant and that arguments in such appeal will be appropriately discussed in a public hearing set for the purpose within 30 days from receipt of the copy of the application or petition for such increase.”

“Panelco III ignored and violated all the requirements of law,” Palaris said.   source

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In Photo: Pangasinan Board Member Ranjit Shahani (center) shows to the media on Monday, a copy of the petition he and his mother, former Sen. Leticia Ramos-Shahani, filed before the Regional Trial Court. With him are officers of the Knight of Columbus of Eastern Pangasinan. (Jun Galope)