BAGUIO CITY – Some 1,052 beneficiaries of Benguet Electric Cooperative (BENECO) member-consumer-owners who passed away received financial assistance pursuant to the cooperative’s policy in the grant of burial assistance implemented over the past two years.
Based on the data obtained from BENECO, some 234 beneficiaries of BENECO member-consumer-owners received financial assistance from the cooperative’s burial assistance program which crafted primarily for the benefit of the surviving heirs of the consumers who passed away.
In 2018, the number of beneficiaries of the program increased to 358 and for the first eight and a half months of 2019, there were already 460 beneficiaries who availed of the burial assistance program.
Earlier, the BENECO Board approved the implementation of the cooperative’s burial assistance program where surviving beneficiaries of consumers receive a one-time financial assistance of P5,000 drawn from funds allotted for the said purpose.
In March 2019, the BENECO Board of Directors increased the burial assistance to P10,000 provided the beneficiaries will file their claims for the said assistance within one year from the death of the member-consumer-owner.
The National Electrification Administration (NEA) approved the implementation of BENECO’s burial assistance program provided the electric cooperative maintain its triple A status and that its operational funds will not be affected with the grant of the burial assistance.
At present, BENECO has at least 130,000 registered consumers within its franchise area in Baguio City and Benguet with an average monthly consumption of more or less 70 million megawatts of power.
Under the guidelines governing the implementation of the burial assistance program, the heirs of the registered consumers are authorized to receive the financial assistance upon the presentation of appropriate documents.
In case that it will be anyone of the consumer’s siblings who will be receiving the financial assistance, he or she must present the appropriate waiver from his or fellow heirs waiving their rights in his or her favour relative to the grant of the financial assistance under the cooperative’s burial assistance program.
BENECO is one of the top performing electric cooperatives in the country having consistently maintained a triple A status for over a decade now and having a competitive rate that is even cheaper than the rate being charged by private power distribution companies with a much bigger number of consumers and monthly consumption.
By HENT
