BEDC restores electricity to Ogwashi-Uku after 7 years outage

There was jubilation by residents of Ogwashi-Uku community, headquarters of Aniocha-South Local Government Area of Delta State during the week as Benin Electricity Distribution Company (BEDC) restored power to the area that had been without supply for over seven years.

The restoration according to BEDC’s plan, is expected to be extended to other communities in due course as more transformers will be metered and energised in the coming days as enumeration revalidation, network rehabilitation and safety checks continue in earnest.

The restoration process started with a town hall meeting organised by members of Ogwashi-Ukwu D-Forum, in collaboration with the management of BEDC, led by the Chief State Head (Delta), Mr Ernest Edgar, the Business Manager, Asaba Business Unit, Engr, Adekola Abiodun, his technical team among others.

The town hall meeting, attended by delegates from the various quarters and sub-clans that make up Ogwashi- Uku and environs, was meant to brief the residents on the job done so far which included, the completion of re-enumeration in some areas, the installation of transformer statistical meters as initiated by the company at no cost to the community, among other ongoing processes.

The Chief State Head, Delta, Mr Edgar, in his speech, expressed shock at the level of vandalism of the network in spite of rehabilitation work carried out by BEDC in June 2016) and pleaded with the community leaders to work with the company to educate the public on the need to protect the equipment.

He further emphasised the need to re-orientate and sensitise the residents through safety lectures as delivered by BEDC Safety Manager, Mr Gilbert. Nweke who enlightened the delegates on basic safety tips to be disseminated to their people in readiness for the gradual restoration of power in phases to the various areas.

This approach, he explained, would create the needed awareness to gradually introduce the residents to the reality of the restoration of power after so many years to avoid accidents.

The Director General of D- Forum Pastor Joseph T. U. Nwadiashi who was visibly elated while acknowledging the meters, in reaction commended BEDC for keeping fate with the community in line with NERC’s directive after many years of waiting. He pleaded that the company should keep to its promise of ensuring that within a short period all parts of Ogwashi-uku were be supplied with electricity.

Mr. Edgar also seized the opportunity to educate the people of Ogwashi-Uku on the NERC directive on the use of methodology for Estimated Billing; and confirmed that individual estimated bills would be delivered to each customer based on the global readings from the statistical meters installed on each Transformer feeding the respective customers connected to the same Transformer.

He explained the “Weighted Average Cluster load” approach and urged for cooperation with the enumerators currently carrying out revalidation and load audit as customers were under stating their load capacity and in some cases out- rightly refusing access to the enumerators to assess their homes.