PSALM seeks lower court settlement

The Power Sector Assets and Liabilities Management (PSALM) Corp. wants to scale down the P60.24 billion a local court ordered it to settle in compensation for former employees of National Power Corp. (Napocor).

PSALM has submitted to the Supreme Court its own estimate of how much should go to the members of Napocor-Drivers and Mechanics Association.

PSALM, which has a mandate to privatize Napocor assets and pay its debts, has reduced by half the P60.24-billion court settlement.

The Quezon City sheriff was supposed to enforce the court decision.

“Based on our list of employees, we recalculated (the amount) and it’s slightly more than half—about P35 billion to P36 billion. The [QC] sheriff’s estimated amount did not have a breakdown [of employees],” PSALM president and CEO Emmanuel R. Ledesma Jr. said.

The new estimate of about P36 billion is closer to the P34.7 billion first mentioned in 2011.

The amount to be paid may be passed on to consumers as part of universal charges, which appear on monthly electricity bills, over a period of 10 years. The impact may be halved to about P0.13 to P0.14 per kilowatt-hour (kWh) from the previous estimate of about P0.26 to P0.28 per kWh, Ledesma explained.

Earlier this year, the third division of the Supreme Court asked Napocor and PSALM to settle the backpay and wage adjustments of Napocor’s retrenched employees in 2001 amounting to P60.24 billion. The state contested the figure and the number of employees who should receive the backwages and wage adjustments.

PSALM had said that the high figure would financially cripple the institution. At the same time, Napocor would not be able to buy fuel for power production and fail to support missionary electrification in off-grid areas. It operates 297 Small Power Utilities Group plants and provides electricity to 770,000 households in 207 municipalities across 35 provinces. Riza T. Olchondra