Congress roasts NEA on Beneco GM issue

QUEZON CITY -- The House Committee on Energy on Wednesday castigated the Board of Administrators (BOA) of the National Electrification Administration (NEA) for the overreach in the exercise of its powers that has compromised if not threatened the right of electric cooperatives to name and appoint their general managers.
    Members of the so called “power bloc” in the Lower House – Representatives Presley de Jesus (Philreca), Sergio Dago-oc (Apec), Godofredo Guya (Recoboda) and Adriano Ebcas (Ako Padayon) – took turns in bashing the BOA on the errors it committed in endorsing a lone applicant to the board of directors (BOD) of the Benguet Electric Cooperative (Beneco) to become as the GM.
    The inquiry was called in aid of legislation to determine if the BOA exceeded its supervisory powers as the regulator of the country’s 121 electric cooperatives (ECs) particularly on matters dealing with the hiring of EC GMs.
    The inquiry came on the heels of protests from member consumers, Beneco employees, the Phil. Rural Electric Cooperatives Association (Philreca), local government units and netizens who assailed the BOA’s decision to endorse only Assistant Sec. Ann Marie Rafael-Banaag of the Presidential Communications Operations Office (PCOO) as GM to the Beneco BOD.
    The congressional probe focused on the BOA’s alleged violation of NEA Memorandum No. 2017-035 that provides the requirements and process of the recruitment of EC GMs.
    Rep. Guya bluntly told the BOA members present – DOE Usec. Emmanuel Juaneza, Agustin Maddatu and Rene Gonzales -- that they should have endorsed both applicants Rafael and engineer Melchor Licoben, the current OIC GM, to the BOD for selection since both passed the final interview by the BOA.
    “Nowhere under the NEA memorandum does it appear that the BOA is given the power to endorse only the applicant with the highest score,” Guya said.
    The BOA earlier passed Resolution No. RB 2021-47 that endorsed Rafael as GM since she garnered 94% in the final interview compared to Licoben who obtained 82.75%.
    But the BOA was adamant that its decision to endorse only Rafael was done above board as the BOA had such discretion since the NEA Memorandum did not provide any numerical basis or grade to consider the applicants as passed or failed.
    “The only time we can endorse both applicants is when both of them got a tie score in the final interview,” said BOA member Agustin Maddatu.
    Lawyer Delmar Carino, Beneco corporate legal counsel, slammed Maddatu’s view, saying the absence of a numerical basis for pass or fail in the interview should have all the more compelled the BOA to endorse both applicants to the Beneco BOD.
    Maddatu admitted though that this is the first time the NEA BOA endorsed only one applicant. “We reviewed the rules and we found out that we are not prohibited from endorsing only the candidate with the highest score in the final interview,” he said.
    The Beneco Labor Union (BELE) said Maddatu’s views manifested the BOA’s intention to clip the powers of the BOD to choose the GM.  
    BOA member Gonzales said what the BOA did was to only endorse and admitted that there could be gaps in the NEA memorandum that needed to be addressed by way of amendments.
    But the power bloc insisted that the provisions of the NEA memorandum are clear and do not leave room for any ambiguity.
Guya stressed that the NEA Memorandum mandated the BOA to submit all the names of the qualified applicants to the BOD regardless of the score in the final interview.
    The BOA resolution that endorsed Rafael-Banaag did not state that Licoben failed the interview and therefore he had the right to be included in the BOA endorsement for consideration by the Beneco BOD, he said.
    Rep. Juan Miguel Arroyo (2nd District, Pampanga), the committee chair, pressed the BOA on why there is a wide discrepancy in the results of the final interview.
    No clear answer came from the BOA members, forcing Rep. De Jesus to move that a subpoena be issued to the NEA BOA to produce before the committee the records of the interview conducted by the BOA on Rafael-Banaag and Licoben.
    During the hearing, Noli Alamillo, NEA Institutional Development Department director and chair of the screening committee, revealed that one of the applicants failed to submit any proof of compliance to the requirement that the applicant must have “at least five years experience with proven track record in the effective management of a successful electric utility-related business enterprise.”
    The managerial experience of Rafael-Banaag with a distribution utility has consistently been raised against her, including the Baguio City council that conducted its own probe on the issue on May 24.
    Dago-oc quizzed Alamillo why Rafael-Banaag was qualified despite the absence of a five-year experience.
Alamillo said the screening committee is not empowered to disqualify the applicants, raising a lot of eyebrows from a lot of those who watched the live proceedings aired on facebook. 
    Even the NEA legal office also received flak during the hearing in its bid to provide the BOA a legal basis to justify its decision to endorse only one applicant.
    Lawyer Rossan Rosero Lee, NEA deputy administrator for legal services, said the law allows the BOA to exercise police powers in deciding to name a GM.

But the view was quickly dismissed by Rep. Joseph Stephen Paduano (Abang Lingkod Partylist), the house minority leader. 

“The appointment of a GM is not an extreme case. A NEA memorandum cannot amend the law,” he said. 

Paduano added that the NEA does not have the mandate to name the GM. “You do not have the power to appoint. You better go back to the process,” he said.

Beneco was registered with the Cooperative Development Authority under the Office of the President on Nov. 11, 2020 signed by CDA chairman Orlando Navanera.