Cavite 2nd District Representative Lani Mercado-Revilla called for the immediate passage of a measure banning system loss charges—fees billed to consumers for electricity they did not actually use.
Mercado-Revilla’s House Bill 6976 seeks to amend the Anti-Electricity and Electric Transmission Lines/Materials Pilferage Act of 1994 and cap the allowable system loss recovery of rural electric cooperatives at 5%. She said the proposal addresses long-standing inequities in power billing.
The lawmaker noted that system losses stem not only from transmission and distribution but also from pilferage, illegal connections, meter tampering, and operational inefficiencies—costs she said consumers should not shoulder.
“For decades, Filipino households have been paying for electricity they never consumed and losses they did not cause. This practice is not only unfair, it is also fundamentally unjustified,” Mercado-Revilla said.
Under the bill, private electric utilities would be barred from passing any system loss charges to consumers, requiring them to absorb losses arising from inefficiency and illegal activity.
Rural electric cooperatives, meanwhile, would be allowed to recover only legitimate technical losses, capped at 5% and subject to annual verification by the Energy Regulatory Commission.
Collections permitted for cooperatives would be used solely for upgrading power lines, modernizing infrastructure, and installing anti-pilferage measures, with the goal of steadily reducing system losses rather than treating them as a permanent revenue source.