Manila office hits COA report on city’s power bill increase

The Manila engineering office has criticized a Commission on Audit (COA) report which stated that the city’s electricity bills saw a 40 percent spike last year because street lights were kept on even during the day.

City engineer Armand Andres said that this was impossible because lampposts in the city were equipped with “photocells”—sensors that detect daylight and automatically cause light bulbs to shut off and then turn them on at night.

“Perhaps what they saw were isolated cases [in which] the photocells stopped working but we immediately had that fixed,” Andres told the Inquirer Thursday.

He pointed out that the hike in the city’s electric bill last year, which reached a reported P432.73 million, was most likely due to the construction of two new public hospitals rather than the street lights.

This was also cited by the COA in its report as it called the hospitals “laudable investments on health service.”

Andres, however, admitted that the city government had new streetlights installed last year in dimly-lit areas which could have contributed to increased electricity usage.

But at the same time, he brushed aside comments that “fancy” lampposts, such as those found on Roxas Boulevard, may have also caused the city’s power bills to go up. “These [lampposts] have become tourist attractions. Besides, if we remove them, people will also complain,” he pointed out.

Still, Andres said they would do away with “redundant” streetlights, particularly in areas where there are already lampposts installed by Manila Electric Co.

He added that his office would be coordinating with barangay officials for the monitoring of streetlights. “We may turn them off by midnight in places where there are few people,” Andres said.

According to him, the city government was trying to prevent power pilferage by conducting regular clearing operations against illegal vendors who hook up electrical bulbs to street lamps.

As for the COA’s observation that the city government granted P40.81 million in discounts to businesses which paid their taxes during an extension period last year, city treasurer Vicky Valientes said they were still “reviewing the extent” of the discounts.

The Manila City government usually gives discounts, but only to those who pay before the deadline.

Valientes said that real property and business taxes were the biggest income-generators for the city, usually amounting to billions of pesos.