Republic Act No. 7832

The “Anti-electricity and Electric Transmission Lines/Materials Pilferage Act of 1994″

I and my wife have been charged with violating this Act.

Cepalco claims the electric meter at our house had been tampered with. In August 2007, representatives from Cepalco, accompanied by PNP officers, swapped out our “tampered” meter with a new digital meter.

I am no expert at electrical meter tampering, but I did take a few photos of what the Cepalco representatives told us where signs of tampering. Essentially, they said that the spinning disk in the meter had been mis-aligned so that it would rub against part of the metal body of the meter, resulting in frictional resistance that would reduce the amount of consumed electricity recorded.

Cepalco is trying to bill us for a “differential billing” in the amount of PHP 226, 773.22 which is about $5000 USD, for one-year’s back electrical charges, they are actually claiming that our monthly bill for the past year should have exceeded PHP 25,000 per month, which is about four times higher than our average bill. Since the new meter has been installed, our monthly bill has gone up about PHP 2000, but that’s still one-third of what they claim our bill should have been, so maybe the new meter is defective too…but I don’t think so. I don’t think there was anything wrong with the original meter either.

Since we moved into the house on November 23, 2006, just 4 months after the claimed tampering occurred, I find it difficult to believe that they would try to criminally charge my wife and I for any tampering.

Section 4 of RA No. 7832 states: Incentives. Any incentive scheme by way of a monetary reward in the amount of Five thousand pesos (P 5,000) shall be given to any person who shall report to the NPC or police authorities any act which may constitute a violation of Section 3 hereof.

Our electric meter is on the outside of the wall that surrounds our house. 5000 pesos is about $125 USD and is a decent monthly income for the majority of Filipinos. I would imagine that anyone adept at tampering with meters could make a pretty good living by tampering with meters and then reporting them.

For the eight months that we lived in the house, prior to the tampered meter being discovered, our electric bills ran PHP 4000 to PHP 7300 per month, and averaged PHP 6000 per month. I have copies of all the bills. Since the meter has been replaced, our average consumption is close to PHP 8000 per month, with a high of PHP 10,000 for the month of March, when we had all the Christmas lights up and threw a large party and ran the 3-ton air conditioner for two days. Normally, we only use the 3-ton unit for parties, and we had two parties in December. One, a birthday party-wedding reception, and the other our 2nd annual Jose Rizal Day party.

A couple of things I intend to do is subpoena the electrical consumption records for that house for the past five years, to try to determine when the actual tampering occurred. I am quite sure the three Japanese people that lived in the house before us consumed less electricty than we did. So, the record should show that the tampering actually occurred long before we even moved into the house. The other thing I intend to do is to try to subpoena the name of the person who reported the tampering, and see if I can find out how many tampering report rewards he has collected. If the guy collects three or four or more rewards per month, it may be that he just doesn’t make tampering reports for a living, but tampers with meters and then reports them.

Section 2(e) states that a person must knowingly use or receive the direct benefit…, so while it seems pretty obvious that Marissa and I are completely innocent, since the meter was tampered with before we moved into the house and thus we had no awareness of it, it may be that we are still civilly liable for the difference in billing, but I would dispute any civil liability as well. Every time they send someone to read a meter it should be inspected for tampering.

One thing that doesn’t seem to matter to anyone is that I simply don’t care what my electric bill is each month. I am from Florida, and I am used to running an air conditioner 24/7, just as I do here, and I’m used to paying an electric bill between $20 and $400 USD per month, and sometimes even more.

Cepalco wants to claim that our current rate of usage shouldn’t be used to calculate what we would have used, because after the tampering occurred we would have intentionally reduced our consumption. However, if you drive by our house on any night you’ll see that all the external lights are on and many interior lights, and you’ll also hear several air conditioners running.

When I spoke to the representative from Cepalco that filed the charges agains us, Benjamin R. Gamat, he told me that if we had simply come to the Cepalco office and settled their claim that the criminal charges would never have been filed. But I don’t negotiate with people who are obviously trying to scam me and rip me off.

I was recently approached by someone who wanted to sell me a 4-year old used Honda XR 200 motorcycle, with over 50,000 kilometers on the odometer. I asked him how much he wanted for it. He said PHP 85,000. A brand new Honda XR 200, at the time, sold for PHP 107,000. I refused to even negotiate with the man as it was obvious he was not being honest about the value of the motorcycle.

The Benjamin R. Gamat and the differential billing from Cepalco is in the same class as the guy who wanted PHP 85,000 for a beat up old motorcycle. I do not negotiate with people like that. And I don’t pay ransom. There are many scams in the Philippines to take advantage of foreigners and others with money. It would not surprise me if some major corporations were actually involved with such scams also.

Finally, the fit and finish of things in The Philippines is just atrocious. Walls are not plumb, doors are askew, windows won’t close properly, stairs are irregular in length and height, plumbing fixtures rarely work, and most construction work is make-shift. It would thus not surprise me that electrical meters would all be at least a little off. Ours was apparently off by about 20%, if we assume that the new meter is 100% accurate. I would say that being 20% off is probably within one standard deviation for The Philippines and does not indicate “tampering”, it is only indicative of the shoddy workmanship that is so pervasive here.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 12th, 2008 at 3:37 am and is filed under Cagayan de Oro, Crimes & Scams, Philippines Expat Life. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.