Energy Briefs
–
GARBA Haruna, managing director, Kaduna Electric Distribution Company, KEDC, has said Babatunde Fashola, minister of power, works and housing, is scheduled to officially launch the distribution of free 50,000 prepaid meters to consumers of KEDC in Sokoto.
A statement from KEDC noted that Haruna, who was in Sokoto to inspect KEDC facilities, as well as seek further ways of cooperation with the state government, assured that power situation would improve in Nigeria if only gas supply stabilised and consumers paid their bills as expected.
According to Haruna, the 50, 000 prepaid meters will be distributed to KEDC franchise states which include Kaduna, Kebbi, Zamfara and Sokoto. Haruna also disclosed that the total debt in the four states ran into billions of Naira, saying in Kaduna alone KEDC is owed about N78 billion.
He lamented that majority of costumers default in the payment of electricity bills out of KEDC’s potential customer base of about 2 million. He noted that only about 400, 000 were up-to-date in electricity bill payment while the remaining 1.6 million consumers used power free of charge, hence they were not captured in KEDC data.
Commenting on the state of Sokoto State Independent Power Project, IPP, he said the project is a reality, hence its almost 90 percent completed and has the capacity of providing enough power for the state, which explains why they have come to seek partnership on the improved power supply.
He also appealed to the people of the state that KEDC was not behind the epileptic or unsatisfactory power supply in the state. He added that it is the Transmission Company of Nigeria, TCN, that is responsible for transmitting power to state and that KEDC only distributes the 8 percent of total megawatts given to them by the TCN.
Haruna was accompanied on the inspection visit by KEDC chairman, Board of Directors, Yusuf Hamisu, Bello Musa, chief engineering and Technical Services, and the Chief Marketing and Customer Officer, Murtala Bello.
— Aug 29, 2016 @ 01:00 GMT
|
Tags:
Billing for electricity is the mother of all fraud. The discos have since abandoned reading of meters, so what they do is to simply come up with ridiculous figures which they bill consumers who don’t have pre-paid meters.
The only way to stop this cheating and daylight robbery is for every consumer to be given pre-paid meter, which will ensure that consumers do not pay for whay they do not consume. It will effectively end the era of free money for the discos and this will spur them into working and looking for ways of improving on service deluvery