Rep:Abra electric coop's capital collection ‘legal’

By Freddie G. Lazaro

BANGUED,Abra-- Rep. Ma. Jocelyn Bernos said the collection of share capital by the Abra Electric Cooperative among its member-consumers after the coop’s signing up in the Cooperative Development Authority was legal.

Bernos, the vice chairperson of the House committee on cooperatives development bared this saying she consulted with Coop NATCO party-list Rep. Jose Ping-ay who explained that “share capital is legal and it is for the development of the cooperative.”

One of the first in Northern Luzon to sign up in the Cooperative Development Authority and the first in the Cordillera region, Abreco has begun asking its member-consumers for their capital shares via their monthly billings, perhaps a new phenomenon in the province that did not sit very well with them.

But Rep. Bernos halted public suspicions when she herself backed Abreco’s share capital collection.

Abreco’s General Manager Loreto Seares Jr. vowed “a full disclosure of the accounting of the cooperative funds to be generated out of the contributions from the cooperators in the form of a capital build-up.”

Now under the CDA, Abreco is looking forward into diversifying to be able to withstand economic pressures of the present situation while improving its electrification efforts and service to its member-consumers.

“With Rep. Bernos at our back and Governor EustaquioBersamin who had providing invaluable endorsements in the programs of the cooperative, we will not fail,” Seares Jr. said.