THE Consumer Protection Council (CPC) has faulted the electricity distribution companies (DISCOs) over arbitrary billing and group disconnection of electricity in the country as gross consumer rights abuse.
Speaking in Abuja on Thursday while receiving top management of DISCOs in his office, the Director General of CPC, Babatunde Irukera said billing and disconnection of consumer’s electricity without consideration for those paying their bills constituted an abuse of consumer rights.
Irukera, while expressing understanding about challenges in the industry, said “there is no excuse for how consumers are treated” noting that, “the key complaints that we receive are arbitrary, unsupported and unreasonable billing; people not being treated with dignity, the complaint resolution process is either lacking or unclear and there’s really no respect for people”.
He said consumers’ complaints have not been primarily about supply, “but about billing for non-existent supply”, stressing that “as a matter of fact, a vast majority of supply complaints are attributed to the fact that you (DISCOs) are asking them to pay for something that was not supplied and the other significant reason is group disconnection”.
According to him, “DISCOs have gotten to a point where no one takes their bills seriously anymore because they are considered outrageous. I think the pressure on metering will not be so bad if the estimated billing was more transparent and reasonable” he noted.
The DG regretted that “what DISCOs are doing is connecting their balance sheets to receivables from consumers, but consumers are connecting what they owe to what they receive”.
He charged the distribution companies to stop the arbitrary billing system. “Connecting balance sheet to an opaque arbitrary metering system is the worst form of abuse, especially for an essential public utility”.
Irukera lamented that group disconnection usually adopted by distribution companies because of the debts owed by some members of the affected groups, unfortunately, disregards and undermines the rights of other consumers in the groups who did not owe.
“You see people who are complaining about supply because they, as individuals, have been responsible, but the DISCOs have painted them with a broad stroke and disconnected even the responsible people. As a lawyer, our approach to criminal work, even legal work, has always been that let the guilty man go free instead of punishing the innocent man.
“For me, there’s something fundamentally, absolutely irreparable and inexcusably wrong with penalising people because of the conduct of others. It is just not excusable. The government should never do that to its people. But if the government does it as a state actor, as inexcusable as it is, it might even be permissible. But one person who has absolutely no right and should never have the prerogative to do it is a private citizen to another private citizen. And that is what DISCOs do. They group-disconnect consumers. If there’s one responsible consumer who is being disconnected unjustly, what you are doing is that you are discouraging responsibility”, he stated.
Responding, the Managing Director AEDC, Ernest Mupwaya said that efforts are being made to address the metering gap with more meters for consumers and the adoption of an interim plan of metering transformers for a more accurate estimation.
“The issue of estimated billing has not been fully resolved because of the low rate of metering, and this is closely tied to the impairment on the balance sheet which is tied to tariff issues. The balance sheets are impaired to the extent that we are facing huge challenges to attract investments. But I must say that the government, through the power sector recovery programme, has put up a plan that will address these gaps.
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“There will be a reset this year, and there will be some level of adjustments in such a way that the balance sheets will look better, and this will give us the impetus to get more finances. I think the whole plan is premised on DISCOs being able to meter customers 100% over 24 months. So we have positioned our sales to meet this challenge of metering. But beyond that, we realised that whereas it is important to meter every customer, there is a very quick win meter all the transformers”, he stated.
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