SORSOGON CITY, May 15 (PNA) - Certain provisions of the Local Government Code of 1991 have been breached and thousands of poor families here would be groping in the dark.
This developed amidst non-receipt for the past 11 months of their royalty shares by the city and eight barangays that play host to a giant geothermal energy facility being operated by the Energy Development Corporation (EDC).
About 5,000 of these families covered by the eight barangays within the EDC's BacMan (Bacon-Manito) Geothermal Energy Project are fully dependent on the power cost subsidy that has not been paid for almost a year now and the Sorsogon Electric Cooperative (Soreco) can no longer wait.
Disconnections of power supply to these households and street lights in the eight barangays have been implemented since Wednesday as Soreco board member Nestor Alegre said these barangays failed to settle their accounts for almost a year now amounting about P2 million.
The host barangays use their royalty shares to pay bills for the street lights and the power consumptions of their constituents.
The city government, on the other hand, was forced to stop paying for the P30 in monthly power cost reduction subsidy for each of its over 40,000 power consumers since three months ago when it run out of funds to shoulder the amount reaching over P1 million monthly.
The city had shouldered the subsidy worth over P8 million for the past eight months but failed to continue payments during the last three months when its own funds were exhausted while Department of Energy (DoE) was keeping the money.
In effect, Soreco, in its April statements of account for power consumption of the city's consumer-members released over the week excluded the subsidy from the billing rebate and warned that disconnection of power supply will be implemented soon.
City Mayor Leovic Dioneda has appealed to Soreco to exercise its corporate social responsibility by being considerate especially that all the host barangays were severely affected by the floods that hit the area amidst typhoon Dante.
The city government used to receive about P4 million representing its quarterly share from where it derived the P30 power rate reduction subsidy as mandated by Republic Act 7160 or the Local Government Code of 1991.
Under Section 294 of the Code, 80 percent of the royalty share of host communities must be devoted to the reduction of the cost of electricity in the area while the remaining 20 percent to other socio-economic projects of the local government.
It provides that royalties from the exploitation of natural wealth must be distributed to towns getting 45 percent; barangays, 35 percent and province, 20 percent.
Dioneda on Thursday said that since June last year, the city government has not received its share even as the EDC said it regularly remits on a quarterly basis the royalty payments to the DoE.
The same problem had been encountered by other local government units (LGUs) across the country playing hosts to geothermal facilities privatized by the government from the Philippine National Oil Company (PNOC) to the Lopez-owned FirstGen Holdings in late 2007.
Fed up, the LGUs composed of the municipalities of Valencia, Negros Oriental; Ormoc City; Kananga, Leyte; Manito, Albay and Kidapawan City early this year formed the Alliance of Geothermal Energy Producing Local Government Units (AGEPL) that pressed for the immediate release of their royalty shares.
President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo on April 28 announced in Tacloban City that the royalty shares for years 2007 and 2008 have been determined and will soon be released to the LGUs as she explained that the delay of the release surfaced after the then PNOC-EDC was formally privatized.
As a government owned and controlled corporation, PNOC-EDC remitted the royalty tax shares directly to the host LGUs but after its privatization when acquired by the Lopez-owned FirstGen Holdings in late 2007, the same have to be coursed through the DoE.
To recall, President Arroyo in February ordered the DoE, Department of Budget and Management (DBM), Department of Finance (DoF) and the Department of Interior and Local Government to work on the computation of the royalty shares and have these released at the soonest possible time to the LGUs that play host to the country's geothermal power plants.
As of Thursday however, Dioneda said, no remittance had been received by the city government. (PNA)