Napocor completes restructuring

State-owned National Power Corp. (Napocor) has assured the public of uninterrupted service as it wrapped up its restructuring process yesterday.

Napocor vice president for human resources, administration and finance Edmund Anguluan said the 67-year-old power utility’s 8,500 permanent employees and 1,500 non-plantilla personnel were given their termination papers as part of the final phase of the initial restructuring envisioned for the country’s power sector.

Anguluan said Napocor the power utility has almost completed the re-hiring process for the 3,799 positions approved under its new table of organization.

This, he said, is to ensure that there will be no disruption in the provision of electricity services in the country. "The new employees will start on March 3. We have allotted 15 days to effect a smooth turnover of functions and positions," he said.

He added that Napocor management has committed to pay the retrenched employees as soon as possible. "We can begin paying immediately as long as their papers are complete."

He said the restructuring process has been transparent and was done with the active participation of Napocor’s three workers’ associations. "The workers associations have accepted the decisions made because they were actively consulted all throughout the re-hiring process," he said.

Napocor, which used to monopolize the generation and transmission sectors, has been split into two – one that will handle the transmission business (National Transmission Corp. ) and one that will operate the generation facilities (Napocor residual) while these assets have not been sold.

Transco also completed the hiring of more than 3,700 personnel last week. Most of these people were absorbed from Napocor and have been detailed to Transco since last year.

A new entity, the Power Sector Assets and Liabilities Management Corp. (PSALM) was created to assume all of Napocor’s debts and obligations and spearhead the privatization of both the transmission and generation assets.