BENECO
UPDATE
Delmar
P. Carino
The Benguet Electric
Cooperative (BENECO) will not collect arrears from its consumers who will fail
to pay their electric bills on their due date due to the quarantine being
enforced in Luzon.
Covered by
this advisory are consumers whose power bills must be paid from March 15, 2020
to April 14, 2020 only. They are also given 30 days from due date to pay.
The
Department of Energy (DOE) and the National Electrification Administration
(NEA) earlier issued separate orders directing all distribution utilities
throughout the country to give their consumers a 30 day extension for bills
falling due from March 15, 2020 to April 14, 2020.
This means
that starting April 15, 2020 until the 30th day, all bills that were not paid
from March 15 to April 14 must be settled to avoid incurring arrears.
BENECO has
also decided to stop the reading of electric meters in some areas to avoid travels and lessen the contact between the
meter readers and member consumers.
The electric
cooperative will instead use the estimated billing scheme to determine the bill
to be paid by the consumers. In this scheme, the average electric consumption
for the last three months will be computed to find out the amount to be paid in
lieu of the issuance of the regular monthly bill.
The estimated
bills will be immediately served to consumers after April 14, 2020 and they are
also given an allowance of 30 days to be paid.
The
Distribution Services and Open Access Rules (DSOAR) issued by the Energy
Regulatory Commission (ERC) allows the use of estimated billing when the
distribution utility is unable to read the kilowatt hour meters of the
consumers due to force majeure.
Force majeure
refers to events that are unforeseen and cannot be anticipated or controlled.
Consumers who
wish to pay their bills even without receipt of their bill, however, could proceed to BENECO collection offices.
As of this writing, only the payment centers at the BENECO headquarters in
South Drive and km. 4 in La Trinidad are open.
The
accredited collection centers in the city’s barangays and those in Benguet were
not advised to close but their operations would depend on the advisory of the
local government units.
Despite the
quarantine, BENECO will still ensure the delivery of electric services
particularly to “critical load areas” such as hospitals, medical and health
institutions, government offices, basic utility service providers (water,
communication), disaster reduction offices and military and police detachments.
Engr. Ramel
Rifani, Network Services Department manager, has reactivated the cooperative’s
emergency restoration protocol to address any eventuality.
“We have
already readied our strategic response plan which we have to balance with the
need to curtail the massive deployment of our linemen to help avoid the spread
of the dreaded virus,” he said.
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