Challenge to the Electoral Candidates: lasting power rates reduction!

While the latest petition of the National Power Corporation (NPC) to reduce its generation charge due to appreciation of the peso was welcome news, a greater challenge on how to address the high power rates in the country is still being posed not only to NPC, but to the present administration as well as to all electoral candidates, particularly the senatoriables and House Representatives.

If the administration of Gloria Arroyo together with her senatorial candidates thought they have already earned "pogi" points after gaining media mileage in the power rates reduction of Meralco last month, they are wrong. The announcement could only temporarily appease the electricity consumers as they continue to pay relatively high electricity bill, eating a huge amount in their monthly budget. Consumers are feeling the crunch of paying high for electricity especially since enrolment for next school year starts again one month from now. As long as this administration does not bother to address the fundamental question on how to reduce the high cost of electricity, consumers will remain edgy and will continue to hold the administration responsible for their sorry plight.

The Freedom from Debt Coalition believes there are five reasons why power rates are high which the Arroyo administration and all candidates running for higher positions in the land ought to address.

First, the continuous payments to expensive contracts with independent power producers even when they are grossly burdensome contribute largely to rising electricity prices. Purchased power, fuel and currency exchange rate costs that NPC and distribution utilities like Meralco pay to their IPPs are being recovered from the electricity consumers through the generation rate adjustment mechanism (GRAM) and incremental currency exchange rate adjustment (ICERA). These charges are tucked in the generation charge item which account for about fiftty per cent of the total electricity bill.

Second, the aggressive drive to privatize NPC had resulted in an increase of P1.00/kwh in its generation rates in 2004-2005 allegedly to meet the so-called true cost of electricity. Such increase was just half of the P2.00/kwh generation rate increase that NPC asked for. This was apparently to attract more investors to buy NPC plants.

Third, abuses such as overpricing/overcharging and collection of costs that should not be borne by the consumers by some private distribution utilities as well as of some electric cooperatives also lead to increase in price of electricity.

Fourth, the Arroyo administration's measure to impose the 12% value added tax (VAT) on electricity has resulted in increase in the electricity bill by as much as P200 monthly for consumers with 210-290 kilowatt hour consumption.

And last, the stance adopted by the the Energy Regulatory Commission (ERC) aggravates the burden of consumers who are taken advantage of by the power utilities. The ERC should act in the interest of the greater public, and not of a few elites.

Consumers will be watching out the platform and promises of the candidates with regard to power rates. We all want lasting solution to high power rates... not temporary palliatives!

- Freedom from Debt Coalition

Farmers hail installation in Hacienda Velez-Malaga, say it was a victory for all defenders of land right

After 10 years of struggle and a series of failed promises, the 122 farmer-beneficiaries of the contentious Hacienda Velez-Malaga in Barangay Robles, La Castellana, Negros Occidental were finally installed in the land awarded to them five years ago under the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program (CARP).

 

Gerry Cahilig, a CLOA holder, said Department of Agrarian Reform Secretary Nasser Pangandaman had declared them installed in 114 hectares covered by their collective certificate of land ownership award (CLOA).

 

The installation was secured by some 300 elements of both the police Regional Mobile Group (RMG) and the 11^th Infantry Battalion of the Philippines Army.

 

Some 30 hard core supporters of former landowner Roberto J. Cuenca were reported arrested by the RMG for throwing rocks at police vehicles, but otherwise no untoward incident was reported.

 

"The installation was well supervised and under complete control by Secretary Pangandaman," Cahilig said.

 

Pangandaman made a surprise move to install after he was reportedly ordered by President Arroyo during the cabinet meeting last Wednesday to proceed with the installation.

 

Farmers on hunger strike in front of the Department of Agrarian Reform (DAR) in Quezon City hailed the installation and thanked President Arroyo for responding to their plea for installation.

 

Gregorio Paclibar, 71, one of the hunger strikers and president of Hacienda Velez-Malaga Agrarian Reform Beneficiaries Organization (HAVEMARBO), said the installation was a victory not only of Velez-Malaga farmers but of all those who fight for and defend the right of the poor to own land.

 

"The installation would not have been possible without the determined sacrifice of the farmer-beneficiaries and the support given by multi-sector groups, including peasant advocates, religious groups, solidarity networks, and the government through President Arroyo," he said.

 

Paclibar added: "There is no victory without unity, determination, and sacrifice. This victory is for all."

 

Paclibar said they will formally announce the lifting of their hunger strike when the installation is declared completely successful and secured.

 

"We have started to eat lugaw (gruel). We want to hear that the farmer-beneficiaries out there in the hacienda are fully secured. If our land is put in danger again, we are ready to make more sacrifice," he said.

 

Jose Rodito Angeles, president of the peasant federation Task Force Mapalad (TFM), said he was told that a community precinct to be manned by police and military would set up inside the hacienda.

 

"Police and military presence in the hacienda is very important to ensure the safety of the farmer-beneficiaries and to prevent reprisal by the armed men of former landowner Roberto Cuenca," Angeles said.

 

 

- Task Force Mapalad

Bread and Roses: Women Workers and Prostitution Survivors Call for an End to Militarism and Sexual Violence

International Women's Day Press Statement

Three days after President Gloria Arroyo signed the Anti-Terror Bill into law, women's groups led by workers and prostitution victims-survivors echoed the call of the first Russian feminists who called for bread and peace in 1917, when women started to mark March 8 as International Women's Day.

In a march-rally to Mendiola, organized by the Women's Committee of the Alliance of Progressive Labor (APL) as well as by victims and advocates of prostitution from the Coalition Against Trafficking in Women – Asia Pacific (CATW-AP), speakers denounced the passage of the Human Security Act and the continuing Balikatan exercises as "grave acts of pimping by the Arroyo government of our country and women, for the US."

Marlene Sindayen, spokesperson of APL-Women, said that the Human Security Act (HSA), clearly patterned after its American version, will trample upon civil liberties that people fought so hard to restore after the Marcos dictatorship.  "This government continues to welcome US troops through Balikatan exercises even as it has facilitated the transfer of custody to the US Embassy of serviceman Daniel Smith who was convicted of raping a Filipina.  Our country and the Filipino women are being prostituted by our own government in exchange for continued patronage," according to Sindayen.

A total of 390 American servicemen will participate in this year's Balikatan.  According to earlier reports, around 5,000 American troops participated in past Balikatan war games. Balikatan 2007, the 23^rd in this series, is conducted under the auspices of the Mutual Defense Treaty (MDT) and Visiting Forces Agreement (VFA). 

Field trainings had originally been planned for this year's exercises in Capas, Tarlac and in Laur, Nueva Ecija.  However, the US said the exercises would push through only after the Philippine government handed Smith back to American custody even without a court order.   Smith, who was convicted last December 4 for raping a Filipina in the former Subic Naval Base, was turned over to US authorities on the midnight of Dec. 31, 2006, as the Filipinos are gearing for the New Year's celebration.

"Prostitution and rape of Filipino women and children increased once again after the signing of the VFA in 1998," stated Jean Enriquez, Executive Director of CATW-AP.  Citing statistics that prostitution during the presence of the US military bases rose to at least 22,000 in Angeles and Olongapo cities, Enriquez noted that the number dramatically fell to 143 when the bases were removed in 1992 up to 1998^[1].   Since the VFA came into effect in 1999, the number of prostituted women in Angeles and Olongapo has risen again to roughly 8000 in 3 years time.^[2]

"Now, we are counting around 11,000 women in prostitution in just the two cities, and they keep getting younger women^[3].  We haven't even included those abused in Cebu, Gen. Santos, Zamboanga and numerous other cities where the US troops now have access because of the VFA.  Our member organizations have documented the recruitment of girls, allegedly for househelp or waitressing, ending up as entertainers for the soldiers," according to Enriquez.

Mylene Aniola, a survivor of prostitution and leader of Bagong Kamalayan Collective, Inc. (BKCI) testified that her own mother has been recruited for prostitution in Olongapo City.  According to Aniola, "Many of us belong to second-generation prostitution because US militarism in our country continues.  What we need are jobs and peace, and not increasing numbers of soldiers.  Genuine human security means bread and roses, freedom from hunger, war and sexual violence."

In its statement, the labor center averred that prostitution is not work, but violence against women.  APL asserted that it is the government's duty to ensure the provision of full employment to women and all citizens.

Then in 1917 and now, women workers (commemorating those who died in New York at the Triangle Fire) and prostituted women march for bread and peace.  The survivors carried roses, demanding the scrapping of the VFA, the HSA and calling for justice to all women victims of sexual violence.  They also wore white shirts with slogans:  Karapatan ng Kababaihan, Ipaglaban!  (Fight for women's rights!)  The images are no different from what Russian Alexandra Kollontai wrote in her account of the women's day in 1917:…"The wives, daughters and mothers of soldiers, previously as downtrodden and oppressed as prostitutes, demanded an end to their humiliation and angrily denounced all the hungry suffering of the past…"

---

^[1] Data from BUKLOD, survivors' group based in Olongapo City and member of CATW-AP.

^[2] Ibid

^[3] Ibid

Consumers cry for bigger rates reduction, call for cancellation of onerous IPP contracts

The Freedom from Debt Coalition (FDC) welcome the recent decision of the
Energy Regulatory Commission (ERC) ordering the National Power Corporation
to provisionally reduce its rates by 4.3 centavos for Luzon, 31.51
centavos for Visayas, 0.45 centavos for Mindanao following the
strengthening of peso against the dollar. But it cries for higher
reduction in the electricity rates.

We view these reductions as short-lived as they depended on the
peso-dollar exchange rates which fluctuate constantly. The strengthening
of peso is thus far not sustainable. The reductions only have
"deodorizing effect" to the continually high power rates in our country
for so many years now since the government admitted that it continues to
charge the electricity consumers for the purchased electricity from the
independent power producers even when this is not generated nor delivered.
The consumers are made to pay for this before through the purchased power
adjustment (PPA) and now through the cost recovery mechanism called the
generation rate adjustment mechanism and the incremental currency exchange
rate adjustment (ICERA) under which NPC regularly applies for rates
adjustment at the ERC.

GRAM includes the incremental fuel and the power purchased cost of
generation charge to the Independent Power Producer (IPP) while ICERA
includes the foreign currency exchange rate fluctuations. Both
applications were filed by NPC last year and provisionally approved last
Tuesday, but still subject for a public hearing per decision of ERC.

We stress that for as long as the government continues to legitimize the
onerous and anomalous IPP contracts, any reduction is palliative.
Ultimately, the consumer will always be burdened by the huge amount of
guarantees which includes the take-or-pay provision, fuel cost and
exchange rate fluctuations.

The consumers have suffered enough from high electricity rates. We want
lower electricity rates. Cancel the onerous IPP contracts.