Napocor to lay off over 1,400 more

ENERGY Secretary Jose Ibazeta on Friday urged National Power Corp.’s employees to prepare for a coming reorganization that will likely result in layoffs, saying the state-run firm was overstaffed.

He said Napocor was almost 100-percent privatized, and with no more assets to maintain, the company would have to cut back on its work force.

“I look at it very simply,” he said.

“In 2006, before I came in, I believe they had over 6,000 [employees], and at that time they had 89 percent of their grid assets. We have sold 98 percent.”

A Napocor official said more than half of the company’s employees would likely be laid off.

Napocor was the country’s largest power producer before the passage of the Electric Power Industry Reform Act of 2001, which called for the privatization of at least 70 percent of the company’s power generators in Luzon and the Visayas. The company had been losing billions of pesos as a result of subsidized electricity rates and the high cost of the electricity it had been buying from independent power producers.

Ibazeta said Napocor’s officials should have prepared their employees for retirement or alternative careers following its privatization program.

“I think that should have been done and if not, it should be done,” he said.

Napocor vice president for human resource Edmund Anguluan said more than half of the company’s employees would be cut.”

“We are now in the process of reorganizing our workforce that would cut the level to 51 percent,” he said.

Napocor had 2,868 employees as of April 30. Of those, 676 were at the head office, 1,081 were in Luzon, 265 were in the Visayas, and 843 were in Mindanao. Most were in entry-level professional and technical positions, and their average age was 47. Alena Mae S. Flores, Manila Standard Today