A congressman accused the head of the National Electric Administration of allegedly causing divisive actions to undermine the integrity of a nationwide organization of electric cooperatives.
Party-list lawmaker Presley De Jesus alleged, in a privileged speech, claimed that NEA chief Emmanuel Juanez told members of a task force assisting in the restoration of power in typhoon-affected areas not to identify themselves as members of the Philippine Rural Electric Cooperatives Association, the association of 121 electric cooperatives nationwide.
De Jesus, who is also president of Philreca, said while privately-owned electric cooperatives operate under the governance of NEA, there is an “unwritten consensus” forged over the years that Philreca will spearhead the mobilization, assignment and deployment of Task Force Kapatid field workers to assist calamity-hit electric cooperatives.
The NEA, on its part, will help the designated TFK leaders to monitor the restoration efforts being implemented by the field teams.
De Jesus said the synergy proved to have worked perfectly well in the past, and that Juaneza was aware of the arrangement.
“Mr. Speaker, this representation is very certain that Administrator Juaneza has known this before because he sat in the board of NEA and is part of a group that monitored the task force last year and the years before that,” De Jesus said.
“So, a few days after we have been mobilizing, deploying and reporting developments of the task force, imagine our disgust when Juaneza started questioning what we are doing,” De Jesus said.
“Imagine our frustration when all of a sudden, someone would question why we are spearheading the mobilization and deployment of the task force when he knows for a fact that for the last few years, we have been doing this already,” said De Jesus.
De Jesus also accused the NEA chief of allegedly prohibiting the TFK teams from representing Philreca and telling them to identify themselves only as representatives of their respective cooperatives.
“We wanted the Task Force Kapatid to be identified as part of one big family of electric cooperatives that is known as Philreca,” De Jesus said.
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