BREAKING NEWS, Power
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The federal government directs electricity distribution companies to meter consumers without further delay
| By Anayo Ezugwu | Mar 28, 2016 @ 01:00 GMT |
THE federal government has ordered electricity distribution companies, Discos, to supply pre-paid meters to electric consumers without further delay. Babatunde Fashola, minister of power, works and housing, stated this at the end of his third monthly meeting with operators in the power sector at the Ugwuaji Transmission Station in Enugu.
Fashola said the meeting discussed the issue of availability of gas, volatility of the foreign exchange market, financial capability of Discos as well as difficulties of pricing gas in dollars instead of the local currency among others. He added that Discos must live up to their responsibilities of meeting the demands of their customers to supply them with pre-paid meters to avoid estimated billings.
Earlier, the minister had asked the Discos to always engage their customers by informing them promptly about any power outage and reasons for such problems. According to Fashola, it was not the business of the government to explain to Nigerians why certain Discos were not meeting up with their responsibilities, having sold the various companies to them.
Fashola said government was playing the same role which the Nigerian Communications Commission, NCC, was playing as regulator for the telecommunications companies, adding that each of them must step out to play their roles effectively. “If you are not getting power from the transmission company, you must tell your customers so. The issue of review of tariff was arrived at after consultations. You (Discos) did the consultations. Why don’t you step out and explain the issue to your customers. All of us must explain to our different customers where we operate,” he said.
Information from the Transmission Company of Nigeria, TCN, has confirmed that power supply has improved from 2,845 megawatts to 4,068MW. This comes on the heels of the TCN confirmation that about 21 power plants were presently working across the country while some units are facing a setback due to transmission, water management, and rainfall challenges.
Earlier this month, the Consumer Protection Council, CPC, and the Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission, NERC, jointly resolved to enforce the mandatory 60-day order to Discos to either meter or stop billing consumers under the Credited Advance Payment for Metering Implementation, CAPMI, scheme.
NERC had in its recent directive to the Discos ordered that a customer who elects to procure meters under the CAPMI must be metered within 60 days, failure of which the electricity customer will neither be billed nor disconnected by the electricity distribution company. In order to give a bite to the order, the two agencies during the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding, MoU, further agreed to work together to enforce the implementation of the order and other steps that would ensure conducive environment for consumers and investors in the sector.
The agencies condemned the seeming tardiness of Discos in metering consumers as outlined in their performance agreements with the government and yet have been committed to estimated billing of millions of consumers. They admitted that although the problem of metering in the country was deep-rooted, consumers should not be made to bear the brunt for so long without an end in sight.
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