MikeLigalig.com

By JAIME LAUDE
The Philippine Star

The Philippine Army (PA) leadership is rushing its budget programming to settle unpaid electricity bills amounting to millions of pesos to prevent a power shutdown in most of its camps nationwide.

Records showed that the PA has accumulated arrears of P7 million in unpaid power bills representing electricity consumption of its entire battalion, brigades and division headquarters.

“We are still validating the arrears so that we can program the amount to settle our unpaid bills,” Army spokesman Lt. Col. Ernesto Torres Jr. said.

Torres said that during the incumbency of then Army chief retired Lt. Gen. Romeo Tolentino, the Army settled its P30 million unpaid electricity bills.

But the payment appeared short as there are reports coming from the field that the Army still owes P7 million to local power distributors supplying electricity to its lower units nationwide.

Torres admitted that failure to settle this amount might result in power shutdown in these Army camps.

“Of course, it’s not the military that produces and supplies this electricity. Our power requirements are being supplied by private companies, corporations,” he said in response to questions on a looming power outage at field headquarters.

But he assured that if this happens, there are standby generators in all these headquarters that can be used in case of an electricity shutdown.

Torres said once these unpaid power bills have been validated, the corresponding amount would be immediately programmed. He added that there’s money for this account, but it needs programming before it is released.

“The Army will settle this P7 million including other pending power bills, including the receipts we have now,” Torres said.

He also explained that as a matter policy, the Army usually allots specific amount for electricity consumption in its annual budget but most of the time, the allotment was not enough because of increasing demand by various Army field units.

At present, the Philippine Army maintains 80 battalion headquarters nationwide, excluding brigades and divisions.

“There are too many units but they are reporting to us their power consumption for budget programming purposes,” Torres said.

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