Akwa Ibom residents have accused the Port Harcourt Electricity Distribution Company (PHEDC) of continually being milk out of their earnings by the firm amid epileptic power supply.
They lament that the inability of the company to provide prepaid metres to their customers constitute illegality and a deliberate ploy to exploit residents with outrageous bills.
Some customers, who spoke with our correspondent in Uyo on Tuesday, lamented that the situation was made worse by a new strategy where they accuse customers with pre-paid metres of bridging just to force them to part with huge sums of money as penalty.
A customer, who identified herself as Mayen said, “PHED came back to lay claims of bypass after installing a meter in my house. Now they are asking me to pay N300, 000 penalty. It’s obvious this is one of their strategies,” she said.
At Asutan Street in Uyo where the Correspondents Chapel of the NUJ is located, their chairman, Mrs Idongesit Ashameri complained that after paying a penalty fee for an alleged bypass, PHEDC sent their officials to correct the error only for them to return some days later to cut the cables supplying electricity to the office on allegations of bypass again.
Even in areas where there is steady power supply customers are quick to accuse the PHED staff of extortion under the guise of computing their consumption based on estimated billings.
A resident of Afaha Ube Itam, Uyo, identified as Mr. Dan Etim said he has the old meter which reads but the PHED staff don’t read it.
“I learned that in some places they read it. I have a friend off Barracks road who is still making use of the old meter, and they come to read it every month. He told me that he doesn’t have issue with payment of monthly electricity bill, but here they don’t read my own. We are not billed accurately by PHED.
“Because of small businesses operating here they want to kill us with exorbitant bills. The most annoying thing is that the bills keep increasing on monthly basis. For example if they give you estimated bill of N10,000 this month, next month they will send you N15,000.
“My monthly salary is N36,000. By the time I pay N19,000 or N15,000 electricity bill what will remain for me to feed my family and send my children to school? For me, it is unfair and sometimes you begin to wonder if the Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission (NERC) increases tariff every month too after it was increased last quarter of 2020 to N62.33 per kilowatt unit of energy,” Etim lamented.
