Discos deliberately delaying provision of prepaid meters to customers—Survey
Contrary to claims by all the power distribution companies (Discos) that they are stepping up efforts to increase their provision of electricity meters to millions of unmetered customers, intelligence gathered from the rank and files of workers in some of the Discos show that they preferred running on estimated billing regime than prepaid meters.
Some of the bills distribution staff of all the Discos in Lagos confided in our correspondents that they bosses believe that estimated bills make more money for Discos than what they are going to get from having every consumer metered.
A popular reason given by many of Discos bill sharing staff on why Discos prefer estimated billing system is that “Nigerian electricity consumers hardly complain on high estimated bills and even if they complain, they hardly push further to ask the needed questions or follow up to know why they were so billed”.
Further investigations also revealed that so long as the federal government has not given a clear ultimatum to Discos on deadline for the meterisation of customers, they will continue to give assurances of readiness to meter everybody but no serious effort will be made in that regard.
Part of the findings may be what played out in Abuja on Friday when the Managing Director of the Abuja Electricity Distribution Company, Mr. Ernest Mupwaya, and the Chief Executive Officer, MOJEC Meter Company, Mrs. Mojisola Abdul, signed a contract to produce prepaid meters and assured that they want to put an end to the regime of estimated bills being served power consumers across the country.
Mupwaya stated that the decision by the Discos to enter into various partnerships with local meter manufacturers was in order to ensure that their metering targets captured in the Performance Agreements they had with the Bureau of Public Enterprises were followed through.
According to him, metering would bring about transparency to the power billing process, thereby increasing customer confidence and willingness to pay for the electricity consumed.
