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…No customer should pay a dime, it’s free of charge –Mgt
From Noah Ebije, Kaduna
Some of staff of the Kaduna Electric Distribution Company (KAEDCO) have taken advantage of the ongoing upgrading of prepaid meters to defraud unsuspecting customers of thousands of naira in Kaduna city.
Some customers in the remote rural local government areas in the state may have also fallen victims of the same fraud, not to talk of other states covered by KAEDCO in the North West zone.
The company operates in Kaduna, Kebbi, Sokoto and Zamfara states. But the findings of Daily Sun is limited to Kaduna metropolis in this circumstance.
Daily Sun gathered that customers are charged by some unscrupulous staff of the electric distribution company between N3,000.00 and N9,000.00 per customer depending on the bargaining power of the customer at the time of service.
For instance, a civil servant, who identified himself simply as Gabriel, sent his son to Narayi High Cost area office of the KAEDCO to upgrade his prepaid meter mid January.
However, Gabriel’s son was asked to pay N5,000.00 when it was his turn to do the upgrading after many hours on the long queue on that fateful day. He paid the money and reported back to his father through the telephone that he had paid N5,000 for the upgrading.
The father, who expressed surprise and anger over the payment, hurriedly told his son to collect the money back from the staff who he paid it to.
It was learnt that the boy was refunded the money immediately by the staff who extorted him, and subsequently his father was able to do the upgrading free of charge another day.
Unlike Gabriel’s son who escaped the extortion, many customers have fallen victims, even as the management of the electric company has not admitted knowledge of the extortion.
During the initial stage of the upgrading exercise in the state, many customers spent hours on long queues without being attended to, forcing them to return to the queue the next day.
It was gathered that the long queue was deliberately created by the staff of the electric company in order to frustrate customers, thereby fueling their interest to pay for the free service to avoid staying on the queue for hours.
Daily Sun also gathered that some customers after being frustrated from joining the queue, went after the electric company field workers, tip them between N2,000 and N3,000 to help them do the upgrading whenever they returned to the office from the field.
Some of the customers, who coughed out such amount of money late December to early January, told Daily Sun that nobody told them that the exercise was free of charge, adding: “Since we are in desperate need of electricity supply, we have no option than to pay.”
Our correspondent also gathered that the fraudulent activities by some staff of the electric company have in recent times become the talk of the town which eventually ended up creating more awareness about the fraudulent activities surrounding the upgrading of the meters
Surprisingly, one of the meter units sales staff at the head office of the company, said: “We have been telling our customers that if they don’t want to pay a kobo for the upgrading, they should come to our head office because the whole thing is free of charge. But if you go to some of our area offices, they will charge customers on the excuse that they are running generators or the network is bad, hence they need to ask for payment.”
When our correspondent asked a customer at the customer care unit of KAEDCO head office about his experience regarding the upgrading of prepaid meter, he said he almost fell victim of the extortion because he lived far away from the head office and had wanted to use an area office of the company.
He said it was a thing of joy that he decided to patronise the head office, saying: “I came from a far place, Buwaya, where I reside. You can imagine the distance of my area to this electric company head office. I am now happy that I was able to upgrade my meter free of charge. I will encourage my neighbours to patronise the head office.”
However, prior to the upgrading exercise, the management of KAEDCO kept on reminding the customers through various media channels that nobody was expected to pay a dime for the exercise.
The Head of Corporate Communication, Kaduna Electric, Abdulazeez Abdullahi, simply told our correspondent, “the upgrade is free of charge.”
While the issue of extortion of customers by some staff was on the front burner, another seemingly shady issue reared its ugly head with sales staff asking customers to pay in cash, not cash transfer transaction to purchase meter units.
A customer, Alex, reported this unexpected development to the management of the company, saying: “Last week, I went to your office in Barnawa area to upgrade my meter. First, they said it’s a must for me to buy N3,000 worth of units, otherwise they won’t do it. I wanted the woman there to explain why it was a must for me to buy N3,000 worth of units before she would upgrade it. There was no convincing explanation from her.
“Second, when I eventually agreed to pay and I gave her my card, she said they don’t accept card and transfer that I should go and get cash, otherwise there’s nothing she can do and I left without upgrading it because there was no where I could get cash in that environment.
“When I shared my experience with a neighbour who did his own at the Sabo area office, he told me the same thing that they don’t accept cash transfer.
“Why on earth would they be rejecting cashless transactions for service that’s online based in this age and time?
“Please, I need to understand what is going on because I am sure many people would have been suffering the same fate”
But in a prompt reaction, the head corporate communication said: “No extortion here! Those meters have issues, which is why they are being asked to purchase tokens. The payment is not for the meter upgrade. Like I said, upgrade is free.”
Meanwhile, KAEDCO is set to comply with the order of the Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission (NERC) mandating it to refund those customers that were over billed.
Kaduna Electric and other distribution companies in the country were sanctioned for non compliance with NERC’s capping order, directing them to ensure unmetered customers are not billed beyond a certain threshold.
According to NERC, capping is aimed at aligning the estimated bills for unmetered customers with the measured consumption of metered customers on the same supply feeder.
According to Abdullahi, the company is ready to refund customers as directed by the regulator.
He, however, noted that all customers who are to benefit from the refund must be ready to settle all their outstanding debts or risk disconnection.
“We have the data of those to be refunded. To enjoy the refund, customers must settle their outstanding debt.”
He said the company is weighed down by a huge debt burden, which hampers its efforts at efficient service delivery to customers.
The company urged customers to come forward and clear their debts as it now has zero tolerance for electricity debt accumulation by customers.
Abdullahi remarked that, the company which operates in Kaduna, Kebbi, Sokoto and Zamfara states has to confront the reality with the recent developments in the Nigerian Electricity Supply Industry, where distribution companies are required to ensure full remittance to the market for energy received and wheeled to it.
He, however, said this would be unachievable if customers refuse to settle their bills promptly and in full, noting: “One of the major constraints hampering adequate supply of electricity has been the issue of illiquidity in the sector and this bottleneck can only be overcome with full payments for energy consumed by customers.”
