CamSur power woe: No solution seen

The Department of Energy (DOE) has stepped in to help ease the woes of a power cooperative in Camarines Sur that is buried in a billion-peso debt, but its officials see no quick solution in sight.

The Camarines Sur III Electric Cooperative Inc. (Casureco III) has been cut off from the Luzon grid, rendering a city and six towns in the province without electricity for a week.

Energy Secretary Jericho Petilla on Wednesday presided over a meeting among the cooperative’s stakeholders at a restaurant near Malacañang.

Among those who attended were Edith Bueno, National Electrification Administration (NEA) chief; Ellen Go, general manager of San Miguel Energy Corp. (SMEC), and Claro Turiano, Casureco III general manager.

Also present were a congressman of Camarines Sur province, mayors of the five districts hit by the outage and a business representative from the areas that were cut off from their electric supply.

Power was restored on Dec. 6 after a week. At least 68,000 consumers in Iriga City and the towns of Baao, Buhi, Bato, Balatan, Bula and Nabua were affected.

P3M a day

Casureco III has a deal with SMEC, the cooperative’s power supplier, that requires the payment of P3 million a day to SMEC until more than P140 million in power bills—overdue and current—has been paid.

On top of what it owed to SMEC, however, Casureco III also owes more than P700 million to the National Grid Corp. of the Philippines, the Power Sector Assets and Liabilities Management Corp. and the NEA.

During the meeting, Petilla expressed doubts about Casureco III’s capacity to pay SMEC. “How can a P3-million-a-day collection be sustained in three months when there is not enough collectibles?” he told cooperative officials.

Turiano, the cooperative head, said the cooperative could collect up to P2.7 million a day but admitted the cooperative would not have enough money for the salaries of its workers, who have not been receiving their pay since November.

Rino Abad, a DOE director, found the financial records of Casureco III confusing, noting that it had more employees than what it needed.

Overstaffed

Abad said that in January this year, the ideal number of employees for the cooperative should have been 141 but it actually had 251 workers, which translated to P9 million in additional salaries and benefits.

The cooperative also incurred a system loss of more than 20 percent when it was allowed by law to pass on only 13 percent of its system loss. This means the cooperative absorbs tens of millions of pesos in losses every year, said Abad.

In 2007 alone, Casureco III absorbed at least P48 million in losses after it incurred a 27-percent system loss.

Mismanagement has been tagged the main culprit for the financial abyss that the cooperative has plunged into.

Several politicians have proposed that the NEA take over the cooperative but the proposal, too, has not been proven effective in previous cases.