Fashola warns against arbitrary purchase of transformers, other power equipment 

Minister of power, works and housing, Babatunde Fashola, on Thursday, warned individuals and other corporate organisations to desist from buying transformers, as only electricity distribution companies (Discos) operating in the country are authorised to buy and install transformers and other power equipment in their areas of operations.

Fashola made this known in Abuja during a courtesy visit of Ernest Mupwaya, managing director/CEO of Abuja Electricity Distribution Company (AEDC) to his office.

According to Fashola, the warning became necessary following government’s intention to totally eradicate the proliferation of fake and sub-standard transformers that come into the country without appropriate certification.

The minister also stated that most of the challenges facing the sector were not technical issues alone, but also man-made, which could be resolved at the sector operators’ meeting organised by the ministry once in every month.

Addressing some of the issues raised by the AEDC management, including non-payment of electricity bills by ministries, departments and agencies (MDAs), the minister said government was fully committed to paying the backlog of bills but after thorough verification in order to ascertain those claims before payments could be effected.

On energy conservation, he called on Discos to focus on sensitising consumers on the need to save energy by habitually putting off electrical gadgets and appliances when not in use, as well as improving on their customer relations and building customer confidence through quality service delivery.

Speaking further, he said government was fully ready to deal with vandals in the electricity sector, by imposing stringent measures that might be punitive, stressing that this would serve as deterrent to other perpetrators.

Mupwaya, in his response, said his company was “fully committed to making their customers happy through regular supply of electricity to their homes and business places in a safe and affordable manner.”

He added that Abuja Disco had an installed network capacity of 870mw above the 650mw peak power received across its franchise area, explaining that the company out of 876,520 customers in its business catchment area had metered over 359,969 customers.

The Abuja Discos boss promised that all commercial customers would be metered by December 2016, while residential customers would all be metered shortly after.