Jos Electricity Not Ready For Business – Forum
BY CHAMBERLAIN ODEY, JOS – The Jos Electricity Distribution Company (JED) Plc came under heavy knocks and damning reviews at a customer consultation forum, with a roundly-endorsed consensus that “JED is not yet ready for business “.
Although JED Plc, as a foretaste of its desired expectations, canvassed and promoted the virtues and messages that “it is a crime to steal energy, tamper or bypass meter, or vandalize (JED) power installations”, representatives of the consumer community did not spare the company as they came down hard on its performance.
According to the Consumers’ Forum, the JED’s present moral and integrity ratings are abysmally below average, and challenged the management to sit up, adjust, and re-strategize towards effective service delivery and respond to customer care demands as well as the realities of its operational environment.
Blazing customers’ anger was the issue of estimated billing, frowned at by many as a precipitous shadow loop that provides JED Plc officials huge opportunity to over invoice and swindle hapless customers every month.
Customers’ outcries also tallied on the fraudulent potential of faulty meters which are on the default line of increasing bill even when users have generally put appliances at rest to temporarily halt electricity consumption.
Citing the national minimum wage of N18,000, consumers also queried the average charge of N10,000 per residential customer per month, chiding the energy marketer of over exploitation, and leaving the consumer with near to nothing to meet other domestic upkeep demands.
Represented at the Forum were members of the Plateau State House of Assembly and they corroborated reports of overbilling, faulty meters, charging and payment before service and unsavoury conduct by JED’s personnel.
The lawmakers noted that there are some organizational shortcomings which require a reconciliation of JED’s policies and programmes with the peculiarities of the Jos energy market environment.
Though the representative of Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission (NERC), Samuel Uma said the JED is performing well in terms of its energy distribution mandate, a lawmaker and former Deputy Speaker of PLHA, Honourable Yusuf Gagdi called for probe into JED’s employment policy and programmes to ensure Plateau state is not short-changed in terms of catchment privileges, especially in relation to lower echelon employment.
On the essence of JED/customer parley, Managing Director of JED, Alhaji Mohammed Gidado Modibo, said it was to “ensure extensive consultation with customers to enable us receive first hand feedback on the provision of services with the view of improving customer satisfaction “.
Accordingly, customers at the end of the exercise called on JED to step up its game by shirking off the nauseating garb of the erstwhile NEPA.