Misrepresenting and face-saving in Beneco

LETTERS FROM THE AGNO 

March L. Fianza

BAGUIO CITY -- The worst that can happen in any organization is to have people you do not know get appointed as your representative. This is exactly what happened to the Benguet Electric Cooperative and its member-consumer-owners (MCOs), the genuine possessors and investors of their electric power provider.
    In an overthrow or takeover of the affairs of the management of the Triple “A” Beneco, the National Electric Administration (NEA) and its allies in the local government removed the elected board of directors (BoDs) of the EC of Baguio-Benguet and replaced them with an interim board. It is an attempt to save-face from the damages already inflicted.
    Running an electric company is a serious matter and anybody who does not have the necessary training and work experience should have the common sense to discern if s/he is fit for the job or not. The NEA officials know that Beneco directors are elected according to the rules, and may be removed if justified.
    The appointment of personalities who were apparently plucked from nowhere without the benefit of a consultation with the MCOs contradicted our norms. Regardless of the accusations of irregularities leveled against the elected BoDs that have yet to be proven, they could have continued on until the election of a new set of directors.
    For the longest time, the NEA was silent about the perks and benefits that the BoDs, past and present, were getting ever since. Why now? To make matters worse, a NEA official was placed as a project supervisor of Beneco, even while the EC is not an ailing cooperative.
    Even Baguio Mayor Benjamin Magalong in a general membership assembly last year described Beneco as a “gold standard” electric coop and asked “why is it being fixed when it is not broken?”
    The truth behind all these started when NEA appointed an unqualified GM for Beneco despite the position not being vacant since the assistant GM engineer Mel Licoben was endorsed by the BoD as the new GM after the retirement of GM Gerry Versosa.
    Even the Committee on Energy in congress unanimously approved a resolution last year citing provisions saying that Beneco did not declare any vacancy in the GM’s position and that the insistence of the NEA-Board of Administrators to substitute their judgment to select and appoint an outsider as GM for Beneco is an overreach of their powers. Congress said the NEA-BOA action is ultra vires (“beyond the powers”. Latin).
    In other words, there was a violation or abuse of power on the part of the NEA-BOA because it was clear that the discretionary power and authority to appoint a GM exclusively belonged to the BOD of the Beneco concerned and not to the NEA-BOA. The provisions in hiring EC officers are found in NEA Memorandum No. 2017-035 which the NEA-BOA themselves signed in 2017.
    I described the NEA appointee as “unqualified” because RA 10531 states that applicants or officers “should be a member of the electric cooperative in good standing for the last five years immediately preceding the election or appointment; and an actual resident and member-consumer in the district that s/he seeks to represent for at least two years immediately preceding the election”.
    Another important qualification is that the candidate or appointee has attended at least two Annual General Membership Assemblies (AGMA) for the last five years immediately preceding the election or appointment.
    To quote excerpts from an Editorial of the Manila Times in March last year, “the NEA is mandated to ensure electricity service throughout the country, and as part of that mandate, it is supposed to supervise and assist ECs in realizing the objective of rural electrification.”
    The Editorial further said, the mandated task is “not happening with the NEA in its current state. The agency has become an instrument of oppression for the ECs, and as a consequence, the millions of consumers who rely on them, to what end no one really knows..”
    “… but many presume is the eventual extinction of consumer-owned cooperatives and complete privatization of the Philippines' electricity sector. The NEA's efforts have become so aggressive and single-minded, that it has even defied Congress' directive to curb its overreach.”
    “On Sept. 21, 2021, the House of Representatives passed House Resolution 213, directing the NEA to comply with the agency's Memo 2017-035, which established that the authority to appoint or terminate ECs' general managers lies with their boards of directors.”
    “What provoked the House resolution was the issuance of another memo by the NEA, Memo 2021-055, which transferred that authority from the EC boards to the NEA.”
    “In spite of the House resolution having some teeth because Congress holds power over NEA's and its parent the Department of Energy's budgets, the NEA completely ignored it, and then followed through with its disapproved revised rules by attempting a comic-opera takeover of the Beneco last October (2021). The intended takeover of Beneco is apparently what led to the amended rule in the first place.”
     “The irony is that the NEA may be serving its current dubious role because it has otherwise outlived its original purpose. The vast majority of ECs in the country are financially stable and performing adequately; there are exceptions, of course, but they are relatively few.”
    “Idle hands are the devil's playthings, so the old saying goes, and the NEA as it is now certainly seems to be an example of that. There is never a good time for this kind of bad behavior, but it is especially unwelcome now when the country's energy security is more at risk than ever.”
    “If the NEA cannot be reformed and compelled to carry out its original, progressive mandate, then it should be abolished. Its existence as it is now is doing the country and ordinary energy consumers more harm than good.”