Congress pushes probe on NEA over Beneco tiff

FOUR PARTYLISTS associated with the country’s electric cooperatives want Congress to dip its hands into the controversy surrounding the position of general manager of Benguet Electric Cooperative.
    Rep. Presley de Jesus (Philreca), Rep. Adriano Ebcas (Ako Padayon Pilipino), Rep. Sergio Dagooc (APEC) and Rep. Godofredo Guya (RECOBODA) filed on May 19 a resolution urging the House Committee on Energy to conduct an inquiry  in aid of legislation on the “overreach of the National Electrification Administration on the screening and selection of general managers of electric cooperatives.”
    The resolution stemmed from the nationwide protest of the country’s 121 electric cooperatives which staged a “Black Friday Protest” last May 14 that condemned the manner the NEA Board of Administrators (BOA) processed the applicants for the general manager of Beneco.
    Central to the issue is NEA BOA Resolution No. RB 2021-47 which endorsed only one applicant to the board of directors (BOD) of BENECO as GM instead of two applicants who were both qualified and who both passed the final interview by the BOA. 

The resolution was widely criticized since it only endorsed Ana Marie Paz Rafael Banaag of the Presidential Communications Operations Office (PCOO) based on her score of 94% in the final interview compared to Melchor Licoben, an engineer who is the current OIC GM.

The Philippine Rural Electric Cooperatives Association (Philreca), the country’s mother organization of all electric cooperatives lambasted the resolution as illegal for having violated NEA Memorandum No. 2017-035, the rules governing the selection of GMs.

Philreca echoed the protest of Beneco employees and member consumers who said that there is nothing in the rules that allow the BOA to endorse only the applicant with the highest score in the final interview. 

More than 14 allied organizations of the electric cooperatives have also filed separate resolutions assailing the BOA resolution as an attempt to clip the powers of the electric cooperatives.

The call for a congressional inquiry came after the Beneco BOD  rejected the BOA resolution in a special meeting last May 19.

In their resolution, the four partylists, known as the “Power Bloc” in the House of Representatives, said the act of the BOA amounted to usurpation of the powers of EC directors to appoint their own GM.

“Such act gave unwarranted benefit, advantage or preference in the discharge of their functions through the manifest partiality and evident bad faith to one favored applicant,” the resolution said.

The resolution scored the NEA BOA for going beyond its mandate. “The NEA BOA, by law, should only screen and validate if the applicants possess all the qualifications and none of the disqualifications and it has no power to select and appoint a GM or the power to designate a probable appointee for the position,” it said. 

The resolution slammed the BOA resolution for attempting to perform a function which does not belong to it since the power to hire a GM belongs to the BOD of the ECs.

The resolution said: “The NEA BOA cannot substitute their judgment over that of the BOD which has the power to hire a GM.”

What the BOA did to BENECO was an overreach of their powers and hence, ultra vires, the solons said. 

According to the power bloc of Congress in House Resolution 1776, the  NEA BOA endorsement of  Rafael Banaag as general manager of Beneco gave her unwarranted benefit, advantage or preference over the  Licoben, who is equally qualified to be a general manager of the electric cooperative (Beneco), the congressmen said.

“The power granted to the NEA BOA and to its own issuances is limited only to a mere screening of the applicants for GMs of ECs and to validate if said officials possess all the qualifications required by law and none of the disqualifications, based on established guidelines,” the power bloc representatives said in HR 1776.

The solons added the “NEA BOA have absolutely no power to select and appoint the GM or the power to designate a “probable appointee” for the position of general manager of Beneco.”

Lawyer Janeene Depay-Colingan, Philreca executive director said Beneco followed the right process from the very start. “Let it be known: Beneco management and employees, Beneco MCOs, and our One EC-MCO Movement are not meddling with the mandate of NEA. We are calling out the decision that did not go through the proper procedure to be rectified. We thank Beneco for standing up for what is right,” said Colingan.

“Despite the provisions of the law giving independence to the electric cooperatives to select and appoint its own general manager, the Board of Administrators of NEA selected one candidate and approved a resolution endorsing only one of the two qualified candidates for the position of general manager of Beneco,” added Colingan.

Presley C. De Jesus, Philreca president, said “the reason the entire 121 electric cooperatives are up in arms is because the BOA of the NEA violated and breached the very clear processes in hiring and appointing general managers that they themselves approved.”

“The NEA BOA should not intervene in the affairs and mandate of the electric cooperatives’ board of directors. The BOA committed grave abuse of discretion because the NEA BOA has no power – neither by virtue of Republic Act 10531 nor by any existing regulatory measures – to choose which of the qualified applicants they should endorse to the EC’s BOD based on any arbitrary preference of the NEA BOA,” De Jesus said.

In joint letter by Philreca and Nagmec (National Association of General Managers of Electric Cooperatives), also urged the NEA BOA to “rectify its error and set aside RB Resolution No. 2021-47 to spare itself from a deluge of serious legal actions and unprecedented rant not just from Beneco’s member-consumer-owners but from the entire electric cooperatives sector who have the same sentiment on this issue.”