Estimated billing, exploitative- NLC

President of the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) Comrade Ayuba Wabba has described estimated billing issued by the Electricity Distribution Companies (DisCos) to Nigerians as exploitative, saying the act has been on for years unabated.

Wabba made the call at the “Public Consultation on Capping of Estimated Billing, Distribution Franchising and Competitive Transition Charge’’ organised by the Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission (NERC) in Abuja.

The NLC president, who called on the DisCos) to stop estimated billing, stated that it could be addressed by providing meters to customers.

He said: “Your organisation is essentially a regulatory outfit (NERC), recently I had to make a statement that it seems the agency is soft on the operators and hard on customers for obvious reasons.

“How can we make progress in such a situation, it shouldn’t be about profit, but it should be about service to Nigerians.

“Therefore, I want you this time around to make sure you bring the full wrath of the law to respond to those people that are actually making things difficult for Nigerians.’’

He said the Manufacturers Association of Nigeria (MAN) had continued to decry the lack of stable power supply as their businesses were almost going under.

“Industries are closing down because they have to run on generators, power is not stable and it is too expensive. We cannot create jobs if we don’t have stable power supply, if we are going to the wrong direction, we should put a stop to this as it will not take us to the ultimate direction.

“This type of interaction is very important but you must also act on our complaints, we must be able to do what is right.’’

Speaking at the event, the Commissioner, Consumers Affairs, NERC, Mr Moses Arigu vowed that the commission will closely monitor the deployment of meters through the Meter Assets Provider (MAP) Scheme to ensure that customers are metered.

He said the scheme was designed to tackle issues relating, but not limited to adherence to timeline for replacement of faulty meters, timely metering of new connections and elimination of bulk billing/arbitrary billing.

Arigu said while customers were being metered through MAP, adding that not all unmetered customers would be metered at the same time.

 “Thus, the proposed order is expected to be catalyst for the Distribution Companies (DisCos) to accelerate or fast-track deployment of meters to unmetered customers.

“In the MAP regulation, the commission is to come out with order on Capping of Estimated Billing, which when finalised is to be effective few months after the metering procurement process through the MAP, and this began on May 1,’’ Arigu said.

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