Stakeholders in the power sector have decried shortage of manpower needed to bridge the metering gap which is said to stand at five million households.
Speaking during the graduation ceremony of the new set of graduates from MOMAS Metering School (MMS) in Mowe, Ogun State on Tuesday, the Group Chairman, MOMAS Group, Engr Kola Balogun said adequate manpower deficiency is one of several factors responsible for the widening metering gap in Nigeria.
According to him, “There are lots of manpower deficiency in the power sector and we realized that we have the opportunity to pass on skills we have acquired over 30 years now. Our objective is to maximize the opportunity we have in the metering subsection of the power sector value chain by providing adequate and competent training to young graduates, undergraduates and school certificate holders that will be useful for the mass roll-out of meters under the government-backed Meter Asset Providers (MAP) scheme.
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“The training we are organizing provides direct and indirect jobs to hundreds of youth who are being taken out of the street and engaged in productive activities. We realized that there is a huge deficit in the metering gap and meter installation. If the MAP scheme is well-executed, we will need one million meter installers to install five million meters needed to fill the metering gap.”
He admitted that the cost of training may discourage some youths from taking up the opportunity and therefore called on the government to intervene by sponsoring the young ones to attend the training school.
“We are emphasizing government intervention because most youths that are unemployed are struggling to pay for the training while most cannot afford the cost but they are willing to learn.
“We are also using the opportunity of the mass rollout scheme of MAP to engage the youths and take them off the street. Our training and the curriculum are endorsed by the Council for the Regulation of Engineering in Nigeria (COREN) and Nigeria Society of Engineers (NSE).
“These bodies of engineers have come out with the scope of the curriculum and it was designed to accommodate everyone irrespective of your background, either science or not. We are able to pass the practical knowledge to them and they are able to install meters,” he said.
On MAP, he said because of the issues of local content compliance, “we still have some setbacks on the implementation of MAP. Funding too is another challenge we are facing. Government’s intervention is also required hereby ensuring that indigenous meter manufacturers are patronized. We want to explore MAP to put meters in every consumers’ premises.
“Having realized that the metering gap now stands at about five million, we need at least one million meter installers to bridge the gap. Remember, by the time every household is installed, some meter may be due for replacement, servicing and repairs. These meter installers we are training we do all these tasks for them. They will also be trained to carry out network cleansing which is another gap we have identified. This will reduce technical losses in the sector,” he said.
In his remarks, Engr Alli Rabiu, National President, COREN, expressed satisfaction with the quality of the training and the infrastructure put in place for the exercise.
“I realized that they are a lot aside from the training, they are also manufacturing prepaid meters and security equipment and gadgets. The quality of their output is comparable with anywhere in the world. We have a responsibility as a council to develop and encourage national content in engineering and we will explore that aspect of the law to see how we can support this laudable initiative.
“In terms of personnel needed to ensure successful implementation of MAP, I can say that we have them but we need more. And I believe MOMAS will help bridge that gap,” he said.
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