Electric Bill Hike

One early morning I was on my to a store to buy sugar when I saw my neighbors congregating near our gate and discussing their electric bills. They were complaining that every month their bills are rising. This is true because later that day I saw a consumer group showing how MERALCO (the electric company) increased their charges without informing their clients. MERALCO replied that they can raise charges without informing their clients because their supplier increased their generation charge and according to whatever provisions from their blah, blah, blah they can adjust their rates. But the interesting thing was the generating company, because of the appreciating peso, already lowered their generating charge. I don’t know who’s telling the truth but definitely MERALCO has been cheating it’s customer and proof of it is that the Philippine Supreme Court had already ordered the utility company to refund overcharges amounting to hundreds of millions pesos to its clients.

One interesting theory though came from one of my neighbors. He said that MERALCO increased its rates in order to pay the talent fee of Angel Locsin, one of the highest paid actors in the Philippines. Locsin was rumored to have been pirated by ABS-CBN channel 2 from GMA channel 7. ABS-CBN and MERALCO is both owned by the Lopez clan, one of the oldest business families in the Philippines that has been rumored to be losing money because of…hmmmm…poor investments like their water utility franchise in the western part of Metro Manila or like wasting millions of pesos pirating actors from the other channel.