Electricity consumers in
Calabar have staged a walk-out on the Port Harcourt Electricity Distribution Company, PHEDC, for failure to adhere to the directive of Nigeria’s Senate to suspend the new tariff on electricity.
The consumers were at a stakeholders’ forum organised by the PHEDC to seek their support for the new tariff regime.
In the course of deliberations, scores of angry consumers who disapproved of the new tariff staged a walk-out saying they would never subscribe to such exploitation by PHEDC.
Some of them who however vowed not to comply with the new tariff regime, however, charged PHEDC to improve on its services in the state before the implementation of the new tariff.
One of the consumers, Mallam Obuh, said that the PHEDC should have called a stakeholders forum prior to the implementation of the new tariff regime before distributing monthly bills to customers.
“Before increasing tariff, they are supposed to have called a customer forum. They are not here to give us the true situation of what is happening. The consumers are not benefitting. If government hands over the sector to private companies, it is because they are to bring in their ingenuity to make the sector better,” he said
Yet, another consumer, Asikong Egbe, on the other hand urged the disco to adhere to the Senate’s directive to halt the implementation of the tariff.
“The Senate said they should stay action. Why didn’t they stay action? The Senate said, maintain the status quo until we resolve the issue and they refuse. I believe that before we call this type of forum, we must resolve and agree before you implement the new tariff. We have not agreed, they have not stayed action and there is a court injunction restraining them from increasing tariff. But, they are not adhering to that court injunction,” he queried.
Head of Corporate Affairs of the Distribution Company, Mr. Jonah Iboma, said PHEDC has put modalities in place to tackle the challenges currently experienced by consumers.
He said that PHEDC would provide 200,000 metres for consumers to address the huge metering gap in the sector in the entire country, adding that this would put an end to issues of estimated billing.
“We are launching the failed transformer project where we identify any failed transformers in our network and work with the communities to replace or fix any failed transformers. That is why we have told our customers never to give money to anyone to tamper with the transformers rather they should come directly to us and we will take care of the problems,” he said.
Friday Nwagbara, Calabar
