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House to hold hearing on fuel surcharge
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Posted on Mar 29 2005
Citing widespread complaints from the community, the House of Representatives will hold an oversight hearing next week on the latest decision of the Commonwealth Utilities Corp. to raise its fuel surcharge to 3.5 cents by next month.
Vice Speaker Timothy Villagomez said yesterday that the House wants to inspect CUC’s books to know its actual financial standing.
“A lot of people have been coming up [to the Legislature] to complain. We need to sit down with them again and get down to the core issues,” said Villagomez.
While he assumes that the CUC could justify its action, he said the House wants to see hard facts. For instance, he said that chamber wants to know if CUC has been diligent in its collection efforts.
“They’re going to open the books. We want to know if they have done their part,” said the lawmaker, who also chairs the House Committee on Public Utilities, Transportation, and Communications.
Earlier, House Speaker Benigno R. Fitial warned that the increased surcharge would have a very detrimental effect on the CNMI’s struggling economy.
“To put it bluntly, I believe this increase will kill businesses, especially small businesses that cannot afford the additional cost burden, which will be overwhelming,” said Fitial.
The fuel surcharge, he said, would result in inflation as workers lose jobs and tax collection drops.
“I am especially concerned about the potentially devastating effect this surcharge will have on many struggling families and households,” said the speaker.
The CUC board voted early last week to increase the surcharge fee to the maximum allowed rate of 3.5 cents per kwh of usage for all customers.
In a majority vote, the board approved a resolution that authorizes the firm to impose a 3.5-cent fuel surcharge on the customers’ April consumption. The 2-cent increase will reflect on the May billing.
Early on, CUC implemented a fuel surcharge of 1.5 cents that would reflect on customers’ bills for March.
The board noted that the 1.5-cent increase was not enough to generate sufficient revenue to ensure CUC’s ability to pay for fuel costs.
