Chief Executive Officer of Enugu Electricity Distribution Company, Mr. Robert Dickerman has said Nigeria’s South East currently receives 300 megawatts of power instead of the 3000 megawatts needed by the region.
The quantity of supply which represents 10 per cent of the power needs of the region has been worsened by what the Enugu Disco said was meter bypass by consumers which informs their move to distribute pre-paid meters in the zone.
Dickerman who said they were investigating whether the bypass of meters were technical or sabotage, observed that they were not billing any customer for power not consumed.
He noted that the distribution company may soon be out of business if actions were not taken to arrest the issue.
“We however know that this method might not exactly reflect the actual bill a customer incurred but they should also realise that most of them are undercharged. The South-East zone of the country receives only 300 megawatts of electricity instead of the required 3,000 due to issues of natural gas supply from the upstream power sector”, he noted.
Speaking in Abakaliki, Ebonyi State, where he led a team to visit Governor Martins Elechi Dickerman said that the company would introduce new pre-paid metering programme that would check meter bye-pass by customers.
According to him “This development might put the company out of business if care is not taken, as we would discover whether the bye-pass is due to faulty technological process, fraud from our contractors, staff or customers etc”.
Apologising to the company for the debts owed by the state government, Elechi advised the company to ensure that its billing method is addressed as it is most times controversial.
