Eko Electricity Distribution Company has said that it would continue to support the wellbeing of its customers, stating that there is no aggressive disconnection during the lockdown on account of nonpayment of bills by customers.
The organisation also debunked the insinuation that some privileged people in the society are given priority in terms of electricity at the expense of majority of the consumers.
It also stated that crazy bills have reduced a lot within its franchise area just as the deployment of meters has greatly improved.
The utility company which takes between 12 and 15 percent of the supplies to the national grid said it deployed about 90 percent of the energy it uses when industries and other commercial activities were up and running to its consumers without any discrimination during this COVID19 period.
Adeoye Fadeyibi, managing director and chief executive of the company who was taking members of the Lagos State House of Assembly Committee on Energy Resources and Information which paid courtesy visit to the organisation through it operations and the contribution the firm has made to alleviate the suffering of the masses during this lockdown period occasioned by COVID19, said the allegations by the committee members that the company was given preferential treatment in terms of supply of electricity to certain people in the society was not true.
“We take it as a responsibility that we are the first phase of the market. The market is quite large, behind us, there is the grid and there is the Transmission Company of Nigeria (TCN), generating companies whether is hydro or thermal, system and market operators which are both commercial and technical. All these get the supply to us which we have to distribute effectively”.
In doing this he said that the company has been fair to its customers when it comes to distribution of electricity.
He said in terms of supply of power, Eko measures itself in terms of energy it receives from the grid. It continues to take between 12 and 15 per cent of the power allocations from national grid. He stated that when one you look at the previous months to COVID19 debacle the company was averaging between 270 million and 300 million of energy in-take.
The Eko boss said further that looking at what has happened in this month of COVID19, at all the meter locations and all the energy they have taken, it means they have taken pretty much 90 percent of the same energy before COVID19. This means the company was able to realign its network for the energy to be taken for domestic use.
He said as soon as the incident of COVID 19 started the company set up a task force to begin to plan on what is to be done in terms of business continuity plan and it focus was, the ability to take energy, to distribute all the energy that it gets and ability to response to fault.
He stated that there is room for improvement and urged the customers to be patient, stating that there are reduced allocations in some areas because the Transmission Company of Nigeria TCN has some problems in some places.
He also reiterated the early statement by it that there is no clear stimulus package in place for the two months’ free electricity proposed by the national assembly.
The leader of the assembly members to the company, Folaji Lai Mohammed who had earlier said that all the members of the State Assembly had complained of the same thing, which is the erratic power supply to their constituencies expressed satisfaction with the explanations the managing director gave and efforts the company is putting place to improve its services to the people of the state.
Olusola Bello
