23rd January, 2013
Hard knocks will continue to come the way of Power Holding Company of Nigeria, PHCN, owing to the sharp practices its members of staff engage in while billing electricity consumers across the country.
Long before the introduction of the Multi-Year Tariff Order II billing method by PHCN which has resulted in skyrocketing bills, PHCN was always at the receiving end of attacks by consumers who accused the company of slamming ‘crazy’ or ‘estimated’ bills on them. Rather than redeem its battered image and improve its services, the bills keep growing in leaps and bounds, while the services PHCN renders continue to get poorer and poorer each passing day. Whether there is power supply or not for weeks, or one’s electrical appliances are switched off for a whole month, corrupt PHCN workers would slam the same bill or even a higher one on the consumer, based on an estimation that suits their fancy.
Explaining away the dubious estimated billing system, a PHCN official said it is when the system picks the minimum consumption over a period of time to determine what someone who is not on the PHCN database should be billed since the person does not have a meter. But this is a blatant lie because even bills for consumers who have functional meters are based on estimated billing system.
A lot of consumers are paying through their noses through this fraudulent estimated billing system. For instance, occupants of a one-storey building at Dideolu Court in Ogba, Lagos, pay over N100,000 as monthly electricity tariff for the 9 mini-flats they occupy, yet the estate is notorious for poor electricity supply. Elsewhere, electricity tariff for a bungalow is not up to one fifth of what these hapless residents are paying. If electricity supply is regular, they may pay close to N200,000 when they don’t own a factory or heavy duty machines that consume much electricity.
Millions of electricity consumers are suffering in silence nationwide because of the crazy bills being forced down their throats without any justification. The puerile excuse government officials have given for this latest madness is that they want to attract private investors to the power sector. Must it be at the expense of ordinary Nigerians who are toiling daily to earn a living? The case is made worse when such bills are slammed on consumers even when there is no electricity supply for months. The bills keep coming regularly every month for services not enjoyed. And when you don’t pay up, they cut off your cable and you must pay reconnection fee before electricity supply could be restored. How can this endemic proclivity for cheating the citizens be explained or justified?
The authorities of PHCN should investigate this matter thoroughly and save consumers from this shylock treatment. We don’t want to believe that PHCN workers impose high bills on consumers because they share from the proceeds before giving the rest to PHCN. We also don’t want to believe that the culture of imposing outrageous bills on consumers has come to stay that is why pre-paid meters are not forthcoming several years after consumers applied for them. Or does it take rocket science to provide pre-paid meters to consumers? And will the unbundling of PHCN solve all these problems?
The Consumer Protection Council should investigate this barefaced fraud and save consumers from the wicked antics of PHCN workers. Electricity consumers should also form a strong pressure group to fight these PHCN sharks preying on their hard-earned income.