Abuja Electricity Company Denies Disconnecting Metered Customers

The Management of Abuja Electricity Distribution Company (AEDC) has denied that its staff have disconnected metered customers to increase its revenue.

Some metered customers within Karu, FCT, and Mararaba in Nasarawa State had alleged that officials of the company disconnected them in order to generate estimated bills to meet revenue targets.

Mr Ahmed Shekarau, Head, Public Relations and Media, AEDC told the News Agency of Nigeria(NAN) that a special taskforce constituted by the company disconnected customers, who bypassed their meters.

Shekarau explained that the taskforce was constituted mainly to disconnect customers in the FCT and its environs, who had been stealing the company’s energy by bypassing their meters.

“I am confirming to you that we have information that a lot of our customers even within the FCT have bypassed their meters and that was why we set up the taskforce to disconnect them.

“Any customer who feels he or she has not bypassed his or her meter and has been wrongly disconnected should forward their complaints to the head office,’’ he said.

Shekarau said that the company had not given revenue targets to staff but only collected money for energy allocated to the area offices, which the company in return paid the Market Operator.

“If the customer sees this as target, then we do but if it is the way commercial banks give target to their staff to mop up funds, we don’t do that,“ he said.

Shekarau said that every area office was expected to remit funds equal to the energy allocated to them monthly.

Shekarau attributed the load shedding being experienced by customers to the allocation of less than 300 megawatts per day to the company because of the drop in power generation.

“Our allocation for the past one month has been less than 300 megawatts per day, as a result we have to intensify load shedding,“ he said.

On estimated billing, he advised any customer who had a genuine complaint to always make a call or approach the company’s offices nearest to them.

He said that the company was in the process of rolling out prepaid meters which would begin with a pilot project in two communities in the FCT to resolve estimated billing. (NAN)