The Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer of the Port Harcourt Electricity Distribution (PHED) Plc, Dr Benson Uwheru has emphasised the need for collaboration and synergy between the electricity distribution company and the Transmission Company of Nigeria (TCN) in their operations to ensure the delivery of excellent services to electricity consumers in the franchise area of PHED.
He made the remark recently at a familiarisation meeting between PHED and the TCN. According to him, integrity and reliability are unnegotiable principles in PHED’s core values aimed at ensuring quality and excellent services are delivered to its customers.
He noted that excellent service is what makes the PHED brand believable, authentic and real even as he pointed out that the challenge on Afam-PH 132KV Line 1 has affected PHED’s ability to deliver excellent service to its customers in the Port Harcourt area of Rivers State, consequently negating the company’s culture of honesty and professionalism.
Responding, the General Manager – Transmission, TCN, Dr Inugonum Thomas applauded the idea of collaboration between PHED and TCN and assured that the fault identified on the Afam-PH 132KV Line would be repaired quickly.
He added that pursuant to the goal of excellent customer service delivery, TCN would partner with PHED to engage communities and ensure the safety of staff, assets and revenue from consumers on the company’s network who do not pay for energy consumed by the company.
Dr Inugonum also committed to offering training to the technical staff of the Port Harcourt Electricity Distribution Plc noting that TCN has enormous technical resources at its disposal and is willing to support PHED by offering training to staff of the company where necessary.
A Board member of PHED, Dr Emmanuel Okotete commended TCN for their contributions to service delivery in the region and subscribed to more collaboration between both companies, noting that such collaboration would guarantee better service delivery to electricity supply in the south-south region of the country.
Meanwhile, PHED MD, Dr Uwheru has urged employees of the company to be solution-driven and hungry for innovative and more creative ways of performing their assignments.
He gave the charge at a strategic session with his executive team following the recent orders marshalled out to power distribution companies in Nigeria by the sector regulator, Nigeria Electricity Regulatory Commission (NERC).
Dr Uwheru pointed out that as many as seventy thousand customers of the company have not ended in the last six months, yet they are connected to the company’s network. He wondered how the company could continue to provide a stable and quality power supply to its customers if the company is not being paid for services provided.
He, therefore, advised the team to deploy every available resource to collect monies owed to the company by customers.
The MD/CEO declared that every employee of the organization is a Techno-Commercial staff and directed that all staff, including himself, should be involved in the company’s revenue drive, stressing that effective immediately, the Storm activities should be from the first day to the last day of the month.
Speaking further at the strategy session, he informed that the implication of the NERC order is that the company must set and meet a N6b target monthly.
He propounded the Blue Ocean theory, directing that every possible strategy should be deployed towards revenue drive in the company, via transformers, feeders, and technically and commercially driven in every region across its franchise area.
He also said that the PHED was deepening its partnership with First Independent Power Limited (FIPL) to further consolidate the gains of the existing partnership with the global energy firm.
Speaking at a business meeting held at PHED headquarters recently by both companies to review progress made, Dr Uwheru informed that his first assignment when he assumed office was to discuss the PHED/FIPL partnership with the industry regulators and fine-tune strategies on the way forward so that the laudable initiative of both companies will not suffer delay or setback as they move to improve on the successes achieved.
Recall, that both companies entered a strategic partnership in the year 2020 to ensure that quality and stable power supply is delivered to PHED Plc customers across its franchise area. In that year, one megawatt was delivered and added to PHED’s network, and in 2021 another 12 megawatts were added. PHED customers, mostly Maximum Demand (MD) customers in the Port Harcourt metro have benefited from this partnership, and expansion to other areas in the PHED franchise is being considered.
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