MANILA, Philippines - Parts of Luzon experienced rotating power interruptions lasting up to three hours yesterday due to supply deficiency brought about by the unavailability of some power plants, according to the Manila Electric Co. (Meralco).
Meralco started the manual load dropping, a way of rationing power, at 10:27 a.m., resulting in rotating blackouts of two to three hours in portions of Tutuban, Manila; Calumpit, Meycauayan, Marilao and Sta. Maria in Bulacan; Bacoor, Cavite; and Grace Park in Caloocan. Parts of Quezon City also experienced power outages.
The rotating power outages ran from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. and again from 7 p.m. to 9 p.m.
Energy Secretary Carlos Jericho Petilla said the situation is expected to return to normal today.
The supply deficiency stemmed from the scheduled maintenance shutdown of the Ilijan natural gas power plant in Batangas, owned and operated by Kepco Philippines Inc. and which sources its supply from the Malampaya natural gas facility in offshore Palawan.
The Ilijan plant is one of the three natural gas plants supplying 30 percent to 40 percent of Luzon’s energy requirements.
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“The Ilijan plant had to undergo pigging (pipeline inspection gauge) activities,” said Meralco spokesman Joe Zaldarriaga.
The pigging procedure also intends to eliminate accumulated deposits, which affect the overall productivity of the facility, according to the Department of Energy (DOE). The process will clean the nearly 15-kilometer pipeline of the plant, which originates all the way from the Malampaya platform.
The Calaca coal-fired power plant in Batangas also went on maintenance shutdown but went back online yesterday.
As a result of the supply deficiency, the National Grid Corporation of the Philippines put the Luzon grid on red alert yesterday.
A red alert means there is severe power deficiency, while a yellow alert means reserves are below the minimum level set by the regulator. Yellow alert is reached when the total reserve is less than the capacity of the largest plant online. For the Luzon grid, this is usually equivalent to 647 megawatts, or one unit of the Sual power plant.
Augmenting the power supply deficiency was the government’s so-called Interruptible Load Program (ILP).
ILPs are generating units, which are the back-up capacity of all industries around the country such as malls.
“The ILP is in place so there’s less (blackout) in Meralco’s franchise area,” Petilla said.
Malacañang also assured the public yesterday that authorities were on top of the situation as the maintenance activities were ongoing.
Deputy presidential spokesperson Abigail Valte said over radio dzRB that authorities were closely monitoring the tight supply due to emergency maintenance.
“We do ask for the understanding of our citizens and their cooperation... We can take small steps to conserve energy over the weekend because that will help in managing the demand,” Valte added.
National emergency on power called
Despite the assurance from Malacañang, the Trade Union Congress of the Philippines (TUCP) yesterday called for the declaration of a national emergency on power to prevent a possible massive displacement of workers due to the power crisis.
The TUCP also asked the Aquino administration to establish a multi-agency group to address the power crisis and protect workers from blackouts and rising electricity rates.
“All it takes is presidential courage to announce an emergency and the need for a national response,” the TUCP said in a statement.
The TUCP said the ASEAN integration in 2015 would require a clear energy roadmap to encourage foreign investors to pour their investments in the country and promote employment. – With Mayen Jaymalin, Aurea Calica , Philstar
Sunday, July 13, 2014
TUCP Slams DOE Sec. Petilla for Inutility on Brownouts
The Trade Union Congress of the Philippines (TUCP) chided Energy Secretary Petilla for his being inability to address brownouts and increasing electricity rates.
The group, instead, proposes a declaration of national emergency on power so that the country will cease being a victim of the vicious cycle.
TUCP described the “red alert” status issued by the Department of Energy, warning as to insufficient supply this weekend as the tip of the iceberg.
“Our ship-of-state is sailing full speed ahead, in a collision course with the twin -peak iceberg of lack of power and MERALCO’s never-ending price increases. The DOE is placing our economic take-off at risk and is setting the stage for an impending economic meltdown,” said TUCP Executive Director Luis Corral.
“The TUCP requests that the DOE Secretary to call a spade a spade and advice President Aquino that there is now an emergency in the power sector, requiring a multi-agency response with clear directions from the President, “said Corral.
The labor center in a two-hour audience with President Aquino this April 30 requested the President to declare an emergency and establish a multi-agency group under him to address the power crisis. The DOE instead set up a task force study group which the TUCP and labor coalition Nagkaisa..
Corral laid the responsibility with the DOE for not laying down clear policy parameters and accompanying strategies to ensure secure power supply or to define competitive rates.
“The DOE doesn’t have these two items which can be technically defined by engineers, financial analysts and industry practitioners. In the absence of crisis leadership, electric power policy is veering from one Supreme Court case, still unresolved, to a new Supreme Court case, from ERC caps on a supposedly free-market activity to a more complex two price-cap mechanism and now to a pitiful DOE Task Force on Power Rates whose arcane and complex debates are further obscuring one central fact: That power Philippine Power Policy is in this climate of drift is firmly in the hands of a socially irresponsible and financially greedy power generation sector,” he explained.
In the midst of this, consumers are supposed to rely on the oversight of an Energy Regulatory Commission headed by the Napoles-challenged Zeny Ducut,” said TUCP spokesperson Alan Tanjusay.
“While there is a lack of secure and reliable supply, government should step in to put up additional capacity. If bilateral contracts between power distributors and generators will better lower rates and approximate true costs, then suspend the WESM until a technically developed percentage of supply reserve is set up to engender real competition. If there is cheap hydropower available during the rainy season, then run it instead of keeping it as ancillary reserve while the more expensive coal and oil plants are run,” Tanjusay said..
He said this can be done without need of amending EPIRA,” All it takes is Presidential courage to announce an emergency and the need for a national response. Then all the players can be prodded, cajoled and otherwise mobilized to restore sanity to the electricity industry."
The TUCP also called for an end to “blue skies” wishful thinking that somehow the DOE target to increase solar from 50 Megawatts to 500 Megawatts, will ease the burden of the supply deficit.
Solar has at best an efficiency capacity at best of 20%, 500 MW really means 100 MW and that will never be large enough or reliable enough to be base load for large industries. Also, this will be done with a feed-in-tariff that will jack up rates by an average of 18 centavos per kWh for the next 20 years.
"Solar seems to be the flavor of the month, Two years ago the flavor was privatizing the power barges and last year it was pushing generation sets. In Mindanao DOE could have rehabilitated the Agus Pulangui hydro-electric complex as demanded by Mindanawons, they did not , so the UP experts are predicting 200 plus days of brownouts for Mindanao next year. In the meantime the DOE rushed implementation of the Retail Competition and Open Access program which we fear will further drive up rates for the captive residential households of MERALCO,” Corral added.
TUCP attributes the deflated 5.9% GDP growth rate in the first quarter as being driven by insecurity of businesses in our power supply. TUCP also attributed the inflation rate of 4.7% in May, the highest in 30 months, on the spiraling cost of power. They said energy officials preen with confidence about the manageability of our power crisis and yet we are made to pay for their failure of political leadership.
The labor group said the country is hit by the triple whammy of spiraling costs of goods and commodities, an interruptible load program that allows Robinson's and SM to power up their generators to energize the lights and air-conditioning of their malls when there are NCR brownouts and be able to charge it to MERALCO customers, and now the real threat of retrenchments because businesses are losing because of no power and high power costs.
TUCP has warned that the ASEAN Integration come 2015 requires a clear energy roadmap. "A wrong-headed energy roadmap will be fatal to all other industry roadmaps. If there is no power, there will be no investors and there will be no jobs," Tanjusay said.- Bohol Standard
Saturday, June 28, 2014
TUCP demands tax breaks for workers
MANILA, Philippines - Labor group Trade Union Congress of the Philippines said on Friday said it high time for government to help workers cope with the rising prices of basic commodities and cost of basic services by giving tax breaks.
The TUCP has presented the proposal during the pre-labor day breakfast dialogue with labor groups on April 29. The proposal seeks to enhance the fringe de minimis tax benefits as a way for executive government to help workers cope with soaring prices of basic commodities and cost of services.
The group still awaits for feedback from President Benigno Aquino III.
“It’s been more than a month since this tax break proposal was shown with the President (Aquino) and there has been no response from him since then. His executive action on this one will put more disposable income into workers’ pocket and improve their purchasing power in light of inflation,”Gerard Seno, executive vice president of the Associated Labor Unions-Trade Union Congress of the Philippines (ALU-TUCP), said.
TUCP and its 48 other labor organizations under the coalition called Nagkaisa recommended during the dialogue with Aquino to revise the current version of the de minimis benefits enjoyed by thousands of workers to improve the take home pay of workers.
Not subject to any tax, the de minimis benefits are facilities or privileges given or offered by an employer to its employees as a means of encouraging productivity in the workforce. It also promotes company goodwill and appreciation to its employees.
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Seno said the among the proposals of the group is to revise the monetized unused vacation leave credits from the current 10 days to 15 days, retain the monetized value of vacation and sick leave credits paid to government officials and employees, and to raise medical cash allowance to dependents from P750 to P1,500 per employee per month.
He added that TUCP and Nagkaisa are also pushing for Bureau of Internal Revenue Commissioner Kim Henares to stop taxing the minimum wage negotiated out of the collective bargaining agreement.
“We want BIR to impose tax only on the incremental amount and not the entire amount itself,” Seno said.
The TUCP is supporting other tax relief measures pending at the Senate and the House of Representatives aimed at lowering income tax rate from 32 percent to 15 percent by 2015 and from 15 per cent to 13 percent by 2016 and from 13 percent to 10 percent by 2017. - Dennis Carcamo Philstar
The TUCP has presented the proposal during the pre-labor day breakfast dialogue with labor groups on April 29. The proposal seeks to enhance the fringe de minimis tax benefits as a way for executive government to help workers cope with soaring prices of basic commodities and cost of services.
The group still awaits for feedback from President Benigno Aquino III.
“It’s been more than a month since this tax break proposal was shown with the President (Aquino) and there has been no response from him since then. His executive action on this one will put more disposable income into workers’ pocket and improve their purchasing power in light of inflation,”Gerard Seno, executive vice president of the Associated Labor Unions-Trade Union Congress of the Philippines (ALU-TUCP), said.
TUCP and its 48 other labor organizations under the coalition called Nagkaisa recommended during the dialogue with Aquino to revise the current version of the de minimis benefits enjoyed by thousands of workers to improve the take home pay of workers.
Not subject to any tax, the de minimis benefits are facilities or privileges given or offered by an employer to its employees as a means of encouraging productivity in the workforce. It also promotes company goodwill and appreciation to its employees.
Headlines ( Article MRec ), pagematch: 1, sectionmatch: 1
Seno said the among the proposals of the group is to revise the monetized unused vacation leave credits from the current 10 days to 15 days, retain the monetized value of vacation and sick leave credits paid to government officials and employees, and to raise medical cash allowance to dependents from P750 to P1,500 per employee per month.
He added that TUCP and Nagkaisa are also pushing for Bureau of Internal Revenue Commissioner Kim Henares to stop taxing the minimum wage negotiated out of the collective bargaining agreement.
“We want BIR to impose tax only on the incremental amount and not the entire amount itself,” Seno said.
The TUCP is supporting other tax relief measures pending at the Senate and the House of Representatives aimed at lowering income tax rate from 32 percent to 15 percent by 2015 and from 15 per cent to 13 percent by 2016 and from 13 percent to 10 percent by 2017. - Dennis Carcamo Philstar
Tuesday, June 17, 2014
Solon seeks inclusion of labor education in college subjects
A lawmaker is calling for the inclusion of labor education in the college curriculum to make students aware of their rights and privileges as workers as well as of their responsibilities to society.
Rep. Raymond Democrito C. Mendoza (Party-list, TUCP) said it is imperative for college students who will eventually join the labor force as workers and employees to have knowledge about labor rights, worker's welfare and benefits, among others.
Mendoza filed House Bill 4399, which mandates the Commission on Higher Education (CHED) to develop a mandatory subject or course on labor education that will be separately offered together with existing subjects in the college curricula.
The bill refers to labor education as the teaching of labor rights, worker's welfare and benefits, the core labor standards, labor laws and regulations, national and global labor situation as well as labor market concerns.
"Labor market concerns include job matching for career guidance, labor issues, overseas work and related problems, decent work and decent wages and other topics related to labor and employment," Mendoza explained.
The party-list solon said the current curriculum in the tertiary level does not equip fresh graduates or the new entrants to the labor force with the basic knowledge of their rights.
"Knowledge of labor rights and standards is critical for college students to understand and use for their own advantage much more for those who opt to work overseas where they are governed by foreign laws and are away from home, their families and their own government and are especially vulnerable to abuse and exploitation," Mendoza explained.
He further added that with trade liberalization and cut throat competition, violations of the internationally accepted core labor standards such as security of tenure, collective bargaining, the right to strike, and the need for workers to receive a decent wage have become more prevalent regardless of a worker's educational attainment or academic background.
Mendoza said violation of workers' rights and core labor standards denigrate the dignity of labor and that the massive practice of contractualization and labor-only-contracting also adds to the woes of workers who continue to be marginalized despite their great contributions to economic and social development.
"Labor education of this sort is absolutely critical for workers to empower themselves and thereby provide them the knowledge to protect themselves from being cheated or taken advantage of by employers or recruiters in a globalized economy where there are no longer secure jobs, where the privatization phenomenon places even the jobs of public sector workers at risk and where the concept of decent work is under constant siege," Mendoza said.
Rep. Raymond Democrito C. Mendoza (Party-list, TUCP) said it is imperative for college students who will eventually join the labor force as workers and employees to have knowledge about labor rights, worker's welfare and benefits, among others.
Mendoza filed House Bill 4399, which mandates the Commission on Higher Education (CHED) to develop a mandatory subject or course on labor education that will be separately offered together with existing subjects in the college curricula.
The bill refers to labor education as the teaching of labor rights, worker's welfare and benefits, the core labor standards, labor laws and regulations, national and global labor situation as well as labor market concerns.
"Labor market concerns include job matching for career guidance, labor issues, overseas work and related problems, decent work and decent wages and other topics related to labor and employment," Mendoza explained.
The party-list solon said the current curriculum in the tertiary level does not equip fresh graduates or the new entrants to the labor force with the basic knowledge of their rights.
"Knowledge of labor rights and standards is critical for college students to understand and use for their own advantage much more for those who opt to work overseas where they are governed by foreign laws and are away from home, their families and their own government and are especially vulnerable to abuse and exploitation," Mendoza explained.
He further added that with trade liberalization and cut throat competition, violations of the internationally accepted core labor standards such as security of tenure, collective bargaining, the right to strike, and the need for workers to receive a decent wage have become more prevalent regardless of a worker's educational attainment or academic background.
Mendoza said violation of workers' rights and core labor standards denigrate the dignity of labor and that the massive practice of contractualization and labor-only-contracting also adds to the woes of workers who continue to be marginalized despite their great contributions to economic and social development.
"Labor education of this sort is absolutely critical for workers to empower themselves and thereby provide them the knowledge to protect themselves from being cheated or taken advantage of by employers or recruiters in a globalized economy where there are no longer secure jobs, where the privatization phenomenon places even the jobs of public sector workers at risk and where the concept of decent work is under constant siege," Mendoza said.
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