The Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission (NERC) has charged customers of the Port Harcourt Electricity Distribution Company (PHEDC) in Cross River to demand quality services from the Distribution Company (DisCo).
This was disclosed on Friday in Calabar by Mrs Aisha Mamoud, Commissioner for Consumer Affairs, NERC, during a three-day Problem-Solving session between customers in Cross River and PHEDC from Thursday to Saturday, Aug. 10.
Mahmoud told the customers that when they paid for electricity, they were paying for services and should insist that those services were rendered.
She said the commission called for the meeting to improve customer satisfaction and transparency in the industry while emphasising the importance of customer rights and responsibilities.
“Receiving complaints and feedback from consumers during the meeting is good because these inputs will help the commission make informed policy decisions and regulations to improve services,” she disclosed.
On her part, the Head of Corporate Communications, PHEDC, Mrs Olubukola Ilevbare, said the aim of the meeting was to look into genuine complaints like over billing, metre and transformer issues, and they would do their best to resolve them.
Ilevbare said it was important to Note that while customers had rights, they also had obligations, adding that one major challenge that had bedevilled DisCos over the years was vandalism.
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“It is the responsibility of the DisCos to fix transformers, but in a scenario where you fix today and it is vandalised tomorrow, we may not be able to meet the demands.
“I know there are times that we don’t respond to our customers as we should, maybe as a result of demands; our goal is to do our best to ensure that whenever there are genuine complaints, we attend to them.
“On the issue of metres, it is the responsibility of DisCos to provide metres, but when a customer cannot wait for the DisCo to provide the mitre, which is done in phases, he can pay for his own metre and within 10 days, it will be installed,” she said.
She added that after purchasing the mitre, the customer will get his or her refunds not in cash but in power tokens until the debt is defrayed.
Speaking earlier, Rt. Hon. Joseph Bassey, Member Representing Calabar South/Akpbuyo/Bakassi Federal Constituency in the House of Representatives, said inadequate power was a major problem in Nigeria.
While calling for an increase in power supply in Cross River, Bassey used the opportunity to condemn the estimated billing system that was prevalent in many parts of the state.
He called on PHEDC to maintain their infrastructures as much as they called on their customers to pay their electricity bills and also warned residents to desist from senseless vandalism of power installations.
Some of the aggrieved customers who spoke to the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) said the meeting was good, but solutions should be practical and not just talks.