waste on electricity

Our electricity bill for the month is Php 2,600. I freaked out when I learned the amount. The previous month was only Php 1,700. How come? Who was wasting electricity? I wasn’t home from the 27th of August till the 1st of September so I know it wasn’t me. The period the covers the monthly electricity bill is every 11th of the month.

I didn’t bring any appliance at all. We have a small ceiling fan that I share with my roommate. My cousin left her rice cooker but I’m no longer using it. I borrow my housemate’s electric iron but I only use it to iron 1 or 2 clothes and I probably use it once a week for less than 2 minutes on each usage. I don’t charge my cellular phone at home. I normally do it in the office and just use the USB to charge. I use the washing machine and wash my clothes once in two weeks only. Basically, I use electricity as minimally as possible. And yeah, I’m usually the first one to hit the bed and the first one to rise and it has always been my owned responsibility to turn off the lights before I go out of the house.

I understand that since I live in a house that I share with other people, we also share whatever expenses incurred within our household. But the sharing doesn’t mean sharing the burden of somebody else’s waste. It is a given fact that there’s already an increase in the electricity rates but I guess at this stage, we should be more vigilant in keeping the costs down.

In the times of rising prices of commodities, wasting should not be tolerated at all. It doesn’t matter if each person will only add 30-50 pesos. 30-50 is a lot already. For me, it is. 30-50 pesos can buy you one decent meal.

So this is not a laughing matter. We need to do something about it. An increase of almost 1,000 pesos is no joke. We need to investigate how this happened and we need to correct it. We need to, or else it will only add burden to those who are already suffering.