Angered by the unprofessional behaviour of the staff of the Power Holding Company of Nigeria (PHCN) in the country, electricity consumers have asked the federal government to go ahead and privatise the power generating company for efficiency and regular income generation for the development of the country at large.
The electricity consumers who stormed the venue of a public hearing on electricity metering and other related matters in their hundreds, in Kaduna, openly accused the staff and management of PHCN of overcharging them and asked government to privatise it if they cannot improve on their relationship with customers.
The committee Chairman, Bamidele Aturu had during the opening ceremony told participants that his committee was set up by the Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission (NERC) to afford electricity consumers the opportunity to speak out on the problems in the sector and as well proffer lasting solutions to the problems.
“Because at that time I travel outside the country and when I came back, I met a huge bill waiting for me, the PHCN staff decided to hike his electricity bill to N1.5 million as against N22,000 before the introduction of the prepaid meters,” he said.
But, the Assistant General Manager (Technical Services), Kaduna Electricity Distribution Company, Engineer Godwin Igwe tried to rise in defence of the defaulting staff, but was quickly asked by the inquiry committee Chairman to accept the blame and apologise to Dambazzau for the inconvenience caused him and the community.
Another customer, Hussaini Abdulrahman, a lawyer and a metal fabrication factory owner who spoke rather sympathetically with the way and manner PHCN is put under pressure to generate revenue by all means, noted that such move has corrupted many staff of the power holding company.
He therefore tasked the committee to investigate the replacement, just as he expressed the suspicion that the former meters might have been subjected to overbilling, forcing the new ones to ‘wipe’ out the overbilling manifest in procession of the PHCN.
For Mrs. Bamidele Tanimu, a resident in Barnawa area of Kaduna city, as soon as she and her husband acquired a land for a building project, they applied for the pre-paid meter to be used when the building is complete, but she said even when the meter had not been acquired and mounted, the bill started coming to the building site.