Systems loss

I was waiting for the Sanggunian Panlungsod of Cebu City to start its session last Tuesday when a gentleman, wearing a friendly smile, walked in my direction after getting inside the session hall. His face did not appear to be a total stranger but, no matter how hard I tried, I could not put a name to it. I struggled with that memory lapse because I did not want to be embarrassed. Neither did I want to show that I failed to recognize him for I might offend his sense of importance. True enough, I felt a tinge of discomfort not remembering a friend’s name. Ah, senior moments!

We shook hands as if we were long lost friends. Both of us assumed that we knew each other enough as to omit introductions. His opening line embarrassed me even more. “Has anything developed out of your systems loss article?” He could have probably mistaken me for somebody else but with his mentioning the word article, he should refer to this column so I quickly tried processing what he referred to. Perhaps the stranger-friend sensed that I was struggling, he proceeded to explain what he meant.

 There have been a number of times in the past when paid advertisements appeared on the pages of our local dailies. The ads showed pictures of people who were allegedly caught stealing electric power. They were properly identified with their names and addresses written below their photographs together with their admissions of having committed theft and their apologies.

Why would persons agree to making public their commission of a criminal act? That would not be normal considering that such admission were to be printed on the newspaper. Admitting to have stolen someone else’s property, a shameful act, would be very difficult to do, unless there should be a compelling reason to do so. Yet, we could not find any sufficient explanation written on the paid ads themselves. Such an aberration led me to imagine that publicly admitting to be a thief was, in so far as those personalities were concerned, some kind of a legal compromise. In exchange of their public disclosure to committing a crime, they would not be prosecuted for their criminal offense.

  To my enlightenment, this was the beef of my stranger-friend when he pursued his opening statement. Indeed, I remembered to have written in this column, a few times, my idea on the publicized admissions of guilt to be related with all of us power consumers. Not only electric power thieves are involved. All other concessionaires are affected.

In the bill that we receive from the Visayan Electric Company, for our use of electric power, we are charged for systems loss. It is my understanding that when a person has an illegal connection, he steals power and VECO suffers a loss. This is clear because a power thief does not pay for his illegal connection yet VECO entails some cost producing that which is stolen. All of us share in paying for that cost and they termed it as systems loss. Differently said, all legitimate consumers not only pay for their use of electric power, they also pay for those stolen by such thieves as those whose pictures are printed on the newspapers.

 From this scenario, let me raise again the questions that my stranger- friend reminded me of. Why, in the first place, are we concessionaires to pay for the loss suffered by the power supplier? All businessmen incur some losses in their operation. That’s normal. They treat such losses as part of their operational cost. Yet, in our power consumption, we are directly charged to pay such losses.

 Secondly. Persons have been identified as having stolen electric power. If we reckon their number on the basis of the frequency of the publication, there should be hundreds. Were they not required to pay for what they stole? How much was collected from them? Since we already paid such cost as systems loss, we should be refunded. Yet, I do not recall of any refund encoded in my monthly bill.