Napocor hands tied over power boycott — Alcordo

The National Power Corp. (Napocor) is "powerless" over the recent decision of some members of the Association of Philippine Electric Cooperatives (APEC) to effect a power shutdown.

"We don’t want to comment on that. We still just monitor it. It’s the prerogative of the distributor. We don’t want to make any reaction. A similar incident happened before and the decision of Napocor was just to keep off this issue," Napocor president Jesus N. Alcorco, said.

In a move called Rural Power Consumers’ Boycott, power distributors in Abra, Benguet, Bacolod, Sultan Kudarat, North Cotabato and Baguio City effected a 30-minute blackout. APEC said it will continue with the boycott by conducting another blackout.

The APEC initiated the boycott to protest a supposed 30-centavo increase that they said will result in a P200 per kilowatt hour rate increase in the bill of an average household and at least P2,000 for large power consumers.

Alcordo said this is not the case, however.

"We have no plans of increasing our rates in fact, we will reduce it," he said.