Why monthly bills remain unchanged, by PHCN

  Amid electricity consumers’ complaints of over-billing by the Power Holding Company of Nigeria (PHCN) in Yenagoa, the company has explained reasons for the development.

PHCN Bayelsa State business manager, Godwin Orowviroro, disclosed in an interview with BusinessDay in Yenagoa that the billing system is based on approved billing system by the industry regulator, Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Council (NERC).

Orowviroro said the billing process is also based on factor of power availability which is obtained from distribution company’s power availability report from where average power supply is calculated.

He stated that in the case of Bayelsa State, the average power supply used in computing power consumption was way below the average hence the monthly bills remained the same whether in months of higher or lower power supply.

Orowviroro’s explanation came as several power consumption clusters using the same transformer told BusinessDay that they were being charged higher electricity tariffs in spite of the fact that power supply had dropped in recent months.

He further clarified that another distinction used in billing was consumption based on residential, commercial or industrial purposes, stressing that their approach has always been simple.

In his words, “I met with Punch Road community who are paying N420,000. I asked them to go and get details of how many people were using the transformer. They came with data of 489 customers. Then you get to know that over 600 persons are connected to one transformer and they are paying less than they should pay.”

He said some consumers were still using prepaid meters, some were on fixed consumption who get their individual bills on monthly basis and bulk bill customers who live in one community or share a common transformer which is billed on load measurement.

According to him, representatives of a community, members of the CDC or other elected officers were usually present when load reading was taken in a simple and transparent manner.

SAMUEL ESE, Yenagoa