NEA ends leadership row at Benguet power co-op

BUSINESS AS USUAL | Employees of the Benguet Electric Cooperative continue with their normal operations two years after their main office in Baguio City was taken over by the police on the order of the National Electrification Administration at the height of the leadership dispute between the regulator and the utility. (Photo by CARLITO DAR / Contributor)

BAGUIO CITY, Benguet, Philippines — The current administration of the National Electrification Administration (NEA) has picked the engineer that the previous board has ousted to again head the power utility serving Baguio City and Benguet province.

Melchor Licoben was appointed on Tuesday by the five-man interim board of the Benguet Electric Cooperative (Beneco) as the new manager, after the NEA board of administrators reported on Monday that he was the most viable candidate among several aspirants it screened for the position. The identities of Licoben’s rivals to the post were not named.

Licoben was forced to slide down to his current position as assistant manager after he was removed as manager and replaced by a former Malacañang official, triggering a protest among employees that led to a short-lived forcible takeover by NEA of Beneco’s facilities in October 2021.

On Tuesday, Licoben signed a one-year performance management contract as Beneco’s general manager, after the interim board was informed about the screening results by NEA Administrator Antonio Mariano Almeda, according to Beneco lawyer Delmar Cariño on Tuesday night.

Cariño had been serving as acting manager until Licoben’s reappointment.

Licoben’s appointment paves the way for the election of a new Beneco board of directors, which was delayed after Almeda, an appointee of President Marcos, ended the regulator’s very public conflict with the utility.

Dispute

In 2021, Beneco employees, the utility’s member-consumer-owners (MCOs), local leaders and majority of Beneco’s previous board of directors actively resisted NEA’s designation of a former Malacañang official as their new manager. NEA was then governed by Emmanuel Juaneza.

They also rallied behind Licoben, who succeeded the late manager Gerardo Versoza Jr., and questioned before various courts the eligibility of NEA’s choice, former Communications Assistant Secretary Maria Ana Paz Rafael.

Employees barricaded the Beneco headquarters to prevent Rafael from replacing Licoben.

The leadership dispute came to a head on Oct. 18, 2021, when armed policemen were deputized by the NEA board to raid and take over the Beneco building in Baguio City at dawn.

Amidst widespread condemnation from senators, congressmen, and then Vice President Leni Robredo, the MCOs took back the Beneco headquarters three days later.

Rafael proceeded to operate as manager at a separate location and hired her own staff, using Beneco funds she was permitted to access. But she was officially sacked by Almeda in January this year for failing a performance audit.

Performance downgrade

Rafael was also blamed for Beneco’s performance downgrading from a Triple A rank to C, during the period when Beneco could not access its operating funds from banks that recognized Rafael as the utility’s manager.

Various banks were sued by Beneco for allowing “unauthorized” personnel to withdraw millions of pesos from these accounts.

Two of the five lawsuits are still pending while cases asking the courts to determine who had rights to Beneco’s accounts have been dismissed, said Cariño.

A separate complaint filed by the previous Beneco board against Juaneza and the NEA board before the Office of the Ombudsman has not yet been resolved, Cariño added.

It was not clear how Licoben’s appointment would affect a lawsuit against NEA, which he filed with the Court of Appeals.

—VINCENT CABREZA