The management of Benin Electricity Distribution Company, BEDC, Plc says the distribution company has installed over 25per cent of its 90,870 meters target for customers under the first phase of the National Mass Metering Programme (NMMP) expected to be concluded in the next three months.
This was contained in a communique issued at the end of a Town Hall meeting on ‘Facilitating metering and Combating Electricity Theft in BEDC states’ organided by Stakeholders Democracy Network (SDN) and attended by critical stakeholders in the electricity sector held last Thursday in Benin, the Edo State capital.
The Management of BEDC said it was implementing the NNMP in its four franchise states of Delta, Edo, Ekiti and Ondo with a view to eliminating estimated billing and is targeted unmetered customers over a period of six months.
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“BEDC is now installing meters on the pole for customers in Bands A, B, and C, as the initial focus to curtail energy theft and meter bypass, while the company has also began community metering where transformers of over 600 communities have been metered so far”, the communique said.
While acknowledging growing joint efforts by communities in combating electricity theft in the BEDC coverage areas, the communique noted that metering under NNMP is free, hence customers do not have to pay.
It said to this end, BEDC and industry stakeholders can sue and be sued on accounts of electricity theft and consumer rights violation.
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“The Federal Competition and Consumer Protection Commission (FCCPC) is carrying out electricity consumer education and interfacing between customers and Discos for complaints resolution” the communique further reads.
According to the communique, among the challenges being confronted by BEDC during the NNMP installation process included meter tampering, rejection of meters by some customers, aggressive and violent customer behavior and extortion of some customers by some unscrupulous agents for meter installation and procurement.
The communique quoted BEDC to have assured that corrupt staff members of being punished, while the company urged electricity customers approached by its agents for the purpose of extortion to utilise BEDC’s whistle blowing channels to report such electricity theft and corrupt acts.
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The company assured stakeholders that it would immediately launch investigations into allegations of customer extortion over meter installation and procurement.