ZAMBOANGA CITY, (PNA) -– The Zamboanga City Electric Cooperative (Zamcelco) announced the more or less 90,000 residential consumers will have to pay additional P 0.0494 per kilowatt-hour (KWH) in electric bills.
Zamcelco Acting General Manager Sherwin Mañada the additional charge that they will collect per KWH is to enable them “to recover the overbilled discount on Power Act Reduction (PAR) from its residential consumers which is equivalent to a total amount of P 4,274,041.99 for a period of six months.”
Mañada explained this came about after they have granted a 30-centavo discount per KWH to residential consumers from April 2012 to December of the same year wherein the discount to be granted should only be 24-centavo per KWH.
Mañada said the grant of discount of 30-centavo per KWH to residential consumers is in compliance with the Electric Power Industry Reform Act (EPIRA) of 2001 for the electricity purchased from the National Power Corporation (Napocor) by Zamcelco.
However, Mañada said the amount of discount lessens if lesser power is being purchased from the Napocor.
Because of this, Mañada said the Energy Regulatory Commission (ERC) on its letter dated July 31, 2013, has issued an order directing Zamcelco to recover the overbilled discount on PAR from its residential consumers which is equivalent to a total amount of P 4,274,041.99 for a period of six months.
He said the ERC order shall take effect starting the billing month of September 2013 until February 2014 or until such time full amount of the overbilled discount shall have been fully recovered.
He said it shall be billed at a fixed recovery rate of P 0.0494 per KWH and shall be reflected in the electric bills of the residential consumers as a separate line item in the bill using the term “PAR Recovery.”
“We are just recovering what we have given and we have the authority from the ERC,” Mañada said.