I am eager to see what’s my electric bill this month because I’ve been hearing a lot of fuzz about the increase in generation charge. I got the envelope now and drum roll please! WTF! I almost threw the bill instantly in garbage with the amount. We are in the middle class family in the Philippines. Let me give you a rundown of our bill, January to February our bill was around Php2100, March it was Php2800 then come April it went to PhP4700! It was almost 100% which is definitely not acceptable for our family class. The thing is we are all minimizing our electric consumption and yet we are being punished by this ridiculous increase with the generation charge? I’m very sorry MERALCO if we are putting up things on to you. The reason is we are paying you as the company who supplies us with our electric needs!
Inserted in the bill is a disclaimer explaining that the increase on the generation charge does not go directly to Meralco as an income, but it is being used as a payment for suppliers like NPC, IPP and WESM.
Everyone is pointing fingers against each other and who’s being punished here, but we of course the consumers. I may not take collegiate course understanding electric distribution but I clearly understand that there is something wrong out there and we are being robbed of our own hard earned money!. How can our bill increase to almost a 100% if we are only 3 in the house with 1 AC which only runs at night, my child goes to school the whole day, we never iron clothes at home, 1 LCD TV (220v), 1 ref, a laptop which is charged most of the time at work. How can this be? Even if you send this literature about saving electricity it makes no sense if you have limited electric appliances at home. On my restday my child and I always go out in the mall to cool down in order not to be tempted in using the AC during the day!
To the Philippine government, here us out please. You have been passing different bills and laws against almost anything. How come you haven’t passed any law which protect us consumers.
Click on the link to try to understand their distribution of fees and the increase in generation costs. I wanted to comprehend the table provided but I hate to do it because of the amount alone already dismayed me.
May 20 2010
Follow up story. I just got our April-May statement and the bill was a whoppin Php6475! It was waaayyy too much. We are carrying all of the weight in paying expensive electric bills wherein they are also imposing rotationary brownouts. Don’t you think it’s just too much of a burden. The amount alone could be used as a payment for my daughter’s school upon enrolment fee. With the new President I hope he could do something about it because we all know that his family is close to the Lopez’s. There must be something that he could do for us. We are not asking for a drastic decrease in meralco bills but trying to do something about it is one big step already.
link:
http://www.meralco.com.ph/Corporate/rates/gentrans.htm
