Why BPE can’t shift performance review of Discos to 2019 – Labour
Organised labour warns that plan by the Bureau for Public Enterprise (BPE) to shift the performance review of the Electricity Distribution Companies (Discos) as captured in the Power Sector Privatisation Act, to 2019, is illegal, and amount to economic sabotage, and would therefore be resisted.
Recall that the BPE in a press statement dated October 14, 2018, had announced December 31, 2019 as the final performance review date for 9 out of the 11 Discos created out of the defunct Power Holding Company of Nigeria (PHCN) in the wake of the power sector privatisation.
The December 31, 2019, date announced by the bureau, contravenes the Privatisation Act, which provides for the review to be carried out on the 5th anniversary of the Discos. Going by the Act, the performance review had been due by October 31, 2018.
Drawing the attention of the government to what it called illegal extension of the review date by the BPE, Joe Ajaero, the general secretary of the National Union of Electricity Employees (NUEE) warned BPE against laying a faulty foundation, stressing that labour, civil societies and the Nigerian public who are directly suffering from the poor performance of the Discos, would resist it.
“We are worried that since the core investors took over the privatised electricity assets on November 1, 2013, their performances have been abysmal with Nigerians bearing the burden of paying outrageous/estimated bills since they have refused to provide their customers with prepaid meters.
A good number of them have carried out their operations within the period under review without conditions of service and disengaged without recourse to any law.
More disturbing is the involvement of BPE being government’s representative on the board of these companies who have not publicly declared a kobo profit as the Federal Government’s stake in the companies for the past five years.
Quite unfortunate that some of the Discos have even gone to the extent of rejecting load from the national grid as wheeled by the Transmission Company yet nobody is checking this unholy act.”
Ajaero called on the government to, in conducting an unbiased periodic reviews of the performance of the Discos and the generation companies, which should be this year, exclude the BPE from mid-wifing the process in view of the bureau’s membership of the various boards of these Discos, saying “it cannot be umpire in its own games.”
He further called on the Federal Government not to renew the licences of Discos that have operated below expectation and without conditions of service.
“We are serving a final notice to challenge the illegal extension and operation of the Dicos in the country,” said Ajaero.