Power bills surge. Fuel prices climb. Relief remains largely invisible to the people paying the bills.
Eastern Visayas is being squeezed from every direction, and for many families, there is nowhere left to squeeze.
Electricity is up. Fuel is up. Food is up. Transportation is up.
And the government keeps announcing measures that, to many ordinary consumers, remain largely unfelt.
The latest regional inflation figures tell the story without needing embellishment. Eastern Visayas recorded 8.4 percent inflation in August, well above the national 6.1 percent. Housing, water, electricity, gas and other fuels rose 10.3 percent, while transport jumped 17.2 percent. Food inflation stood at 7.8 percent.
For families already living from paycheck to paycheck, these are not merely percentages.
They are pesos disappearing.
Consumers have taken to social media and local conversations to complain about electricity bills that they say have doubled in September compared with their previous bills.
These are individual consumer accounts, not yet a verified region-wide doubling. But the complaints are significant because they come at a time when electricity costs have already been identified as a major driver of inflation.
And there is hard data behind the anger.
In July, the 11 electric cooperatives in Eastern Visayas were billed a combined P1.187 billion in WESM-related charges. Of that amount, P573.53 million or nearly 48 percent was attributed to line-loss and congestion charges. It was more than double the P276.5 million recorded in June.
Electric cooperatives said these costs were passed on to consumers.
For a household consuming just 51 kilowatt-hours, the additional charge was estimated at P205 for the July bill.
P205 may sound small in a government spreadsheet.
For a minimum-wage household, it could be rice, fish, vegetables and breakfast for the family.
The cost in increase could have been a meal on one's table.
Then there is fuel.
September has brought successive increases at the pump. For the September 15–21 adjustment alone, gasoline rose to P5.68 per liter, diesel P4.31 and kerosene P4.62.
The Department of Energy subsequently certified that the one-month average Dubai crude price had breached the US$80-per-barrel threshold required for the government to consider suspending or reducing petroleum excise taxes.
Consider what that means outside Manila's conference rooms.
A worker riding a motorcycle to work pays more.
A tricycle driver pays more before earning.
A farmer transporting produce pays more.
A small business running refrigerators, freezers or machinery pays more.
A family commuting to work and school pays more.
Eventually, everyone pays more.
Work, get paid, pay tax, pay for fuel to go back and forth to work, pay bills, what more is there left to even eat?
This is where the government's response deserves scrutiny.
There is no shortage of announcements.
There are fuel subsidies. The DOE says hundreds of millions of pesos have been distributed to qualified transport beneficiaries.
There are regulatory interventions involving electricity pricing. The Energy Regulatory Commission has moved on measures involving the electricity spot market, while government agencies have discussed mechanisms to contain extraordinary WESM prices.
But relief announced is not necessarily relief felt.
That distinction matters because the ordinary consumer does not pay the government's press releases.
They pay the electric bill.
They pay at the gas station.
They pay the higher fare.
They pay the higher price at the market.
And they pay with money that was already insufficient.
Make it make sense.
If government interventions are working, consumers deserve to see where the savings are.
If they are not working, the government should explain why.
If the problem is caused by transmission congestion, power supply constraints and market volatility, consumers should not simply be told to understand the system while continuing to shoulder its costs.
Eastern Visayas has already been sounding the alarm. In July, the Federation of Rural Electric Cooperatives in Region 8 called for reforms as the region faced record line-loss and congestion charges.
The inflation figures show why the alarm cannot be dismissed.
Biliran recorded 11.8 percent inflation in August, among the highest in the region. Samar posted 12.7 percent, while Northern Samar reached 9.8 percent.
The government can point to international prices, market conditions, transmission constraints and temporary power-plant shutdowns.
Those explanations may be valid.
But they do not answer the question being asked at kitchen tables across Eastern Visayas:
Who is protecting the people from the cost of a system they did not create?
Government intervention should ultimately be measured not by how many programs are announced, but by whether families actually feel relief.
Right now, many consumers say they do not.
And when the monthly electricity bill becomes a choice between keeping the lights on and putting food on the table, the issue is no longer simply an energy crisis.
It is a crisis of household survival and the people are asking the government to make it make sense.
Then it is public knowledge that the Leyte congressional district held by former House Speaker Martin Romualdez received the biggest shares in the national budget among solons - next to the son of his cousin, President Ferdinand "Bongbong" Romualdez Marcos, Jr.
And the government has announced that it has allotted billions for infrastructure projects to address inflation woes.
These new projects, including the new bridge and the new Tacloban City airport, are earmarked at improving the region's cost of living.
Although it is not surprising, the recent arrest of Representative Romualdez has made Warays aware of where the billions reportedly went.
Now, nobody is looking at improving the Warays' living standards and economy as it is only measured by the volume of major infrastructure projects, built or unbuilt as "ghost' projects.
Will Leyte and Samar grow? The simple answer is no, with a government that sees only infrastructure as solutions to the region's high poverty levels.
Infrastructure is priority, Romualdez in jail, and Warays are getting poorer every passing day. The burning question now is: Where did all the money go?
As one local saying goes, "Alams na!"
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