Abra coop settles bills; power outages still likely

By Dexter A. See

BANGUED, Abra – The Abra Electric Coop. (ABRECO) was able to avert a total power blackout provincewide after it paid P9.7 million in arrears and surcharges to the Aboitiz Power Renewables, Inc. (APRI) late Tuesday afternoon but power outages in the province are still likely to happen once the rural electric cooperative was not able to settle its current power bills with their independent power supplier, an ABRECO official said here.

Richard Tuzon, ABRECO institutional services department manager, said top ABRECO and APRI officials are undergoing negotiations to come out with a reasonable agreement on time for the cooperative to settle its monthly power bills with the supplier considering the serious damages sustained by the power distributor during the onslaught of Typhoons Luis and Mario last September.

“We just want understanding and consideration from APRI. We are not running away from our obligations but we just want APRI to give us more time to collect from our consumers and pay them our monthly billings,” Tuzon stressed.

He said APRI management should understand that ABRECO relies on its monthly collection from its over 40,000 consumers in order to settle its generation charges to APRI as the same is contained in the power bills, thus, the need for them to be given enough time to collect from the consumers before paying the power supplier.

Under the current set up, APRI imposes to ABRECO the amount and date that it should pay its current power bills which the rural electric cooperative is contesting because it is not sure that the consumers will be able to settle their power bills in the prescribed dates of the month.

Tuzon said ABRECO is proposing that it will pay its current power generation bills to APRI at least during the end of the month or the first week of the succeeding month to allow the cooperative to collect the power bills from its consumers and that the surcharges must not yet be imposed for transparency and accountability purposes.

He assured consumers that ABRECO was able to fully settle its accumulated arrears and surcharges with its power supplier, thus, the only contentious issue undergoing negotiations is the lead time to be given by AP|RI to the cooperative to settle its current bill without the imposition of the mandatory surcharges.

Gov. Eustaquio Bersamin encouraged both contending parties, ABRECO and APRI, to come out with a reasonable agreement on the matter so that the people of Abra will not be again grouping in the dark on what to do once there will be prolonged power outages as a result of disagreements on when the cooperative will pay its current power bills with APRI.

“Abra is always in the limelight of bad publicity due to the series of killings and now power outages. We also want good publicity for our people,” Bersamin said.

Bersamin expressed his gratitude to Energy Secretary Jerico Petilia for his timely intervention that resulted to the avertion of the supposed power outage that might have occurred in the province last Monday as a result of the failure of ABRECO to settle its remaining arrears with its power supplier.