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Discos record revenue losses due to metering gap, vandalism

By on February 10, 2015

The Minister of Power, Prof. Chinedu Ositadinma Nebo has stated that vandalism of gas pipelines and inadequate metering of customers have forced the revenue that accrued to the various electricity distribution companies across the country to drop from N18 billion monthly before privatisation to N12 billion.

Speaking at a recent regional workshop on metering, billing and loss reduction for distribution utilities held at the National Power Training Institute of Nigeria (NAPTIN) in Lagos, the minister stated that commercial losses were still high.

Nebo said that while the defunct Power Holding Company of Nigeria (PHCN) earned a monthly revenue of N18 billion, the new investors that bought the assets earned N12 billion monthly.

He further disclosed that the Transmission Company of Nigeria (TCN) records N1.2 billion monthly as technical loss, translating to eight per cent.

He blamed the revenue losses by the distribution companies on vandalism of gas pipelines and non-metering of customers.

Nebo described vandalism as a monster, adding that vandals always strike when generation hits 4,000 megawatts and above.

According to him, the customers bear the brunt of these losses through high estimated billings.

“Since privatisation, we have brought down considerably, the level of technical losses by increasing our transmission capacity and also trying to bring best practices in billing. We are operating what is called open book at the level of the Discos. So, the Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission (NERC) is insisting that it wants to see all the books of the discos – how much they collect and how much they bring to the common purse,” he said.

“But the metering gap is 50 per cent – 50 per cent of Nigerian electricity consumers do not have meters and we do what is called estimated billing. So, the president has been much worried because a lot of people go to him to complain that they do not know how they are being billed,” he added.

Nebo, who was represented by the Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Power, Ambassador GodknowsIgali,  also stated that N390 billion has been paid to 45,000 workers out of 47,000 workers of the defunct PHCN.

Speaking on the fate of the remaining 2,000 workers, Nebo argued that they could not be accounted for and blamed the delay on their payment on “duplication of names and identities” adding that “people have the same names, dates of birth, state of origin, others.”

He said the government had a plan to roll out 1 million meters and also make funds available to encourage local manufacturing.

 

[ThisDay]