By Lenie Lectura - February 12, 2020
THE House Energy Committee wants to
know from the Energy Regulatory Commission (ERC) if it allowed Independent
Electricity Market Operator of the Philippines (Iemop) to collect 1
centavo for every kilowatt-hour (kWh) from the consumers’ monthly electric
bill.
Iemop is the operator of the
Wholesale Electricity Spot Market (WESM). Its predecessor, Philippine
Electricity Market Corp. (PEMC), used to collect this amount as per approval
from the ERC in 2014.
“The 2014 ERC approval was given to
PEMC and not for Iemop. Can that approval given to a
government-owned and -controlled corporation be transferred to a private
corporation? That’s the number one issue for me. How can a private corporation
collect that?” asked Nueva Ecija Rep. Rosanna Vergara, member of the House
Energy committee.
In a recent public hearing, Iemop
officials said PEMC sought approval in 2014 and that it filed its own
application in January 2019.
“We would like to ask ERC. The only
one that can answer this is ERC. Iemop applied in January 2019, but I don’t
know if ERC has approved this, if this is still pending. We would like to
know what happened. At the end of the day, we want to unburden the consumers,”
said Vergara, who added that ERC officials would be summoned at the next
hearing.
ERC did not reply when sought for
comment.
Iemop, Vergara said, is supposed to
be an independent market operator. However, she said, there could be conflict
of interest because the president of IEMOP, Richard Nethercott, is married
to an assistant secretary of the Department of Energy (DOE) while another
Iemop official, who has since resigned, is also married to the president of
National Transmission Corp.
“The law says that if you are
married to someone who is in the government that has control on the entity you
are involved in, then that is a violation of RA 3019 or the Anti-Graft and
Corrupt Practices Act. I don’t know how they will explain that, but
there’s probably conflict of interest there,” she said.
Nethercott admitted at the last
hearing that he is married to a DOE official but claimed that there is no
conflict of interest, saying a legal opinion from Iemop was sought on the
matter.
He also admitted that National
Transmission Corp. president Melvin Matibag was also married to one of the
incorporators of Iemop but has since resigned.
However, Vergara said the
relationships cast doubts on Iemop’s independence. “The independence is already
subject to question, whatever you say,” Vergara had told Nethercott.
No comments:
Post a Comment