24 July 2014, Abuja – The core investor in the Kano Electricity Distribution Company, Sahelian Power SPV Limited, has injected over N500m into the firm, its Managing Director/ Chief Executive Officer, Dr. Jamil Gwamna, has said.
Gwamna said this when a post-privatisation monitoring team from the Bureau of Public Enterprises visited the company, according to a statement made available to our correspondent by the Head of Public Communication, BPE, Mr. Chigbo Anichebe.
Represented by the company’s General Manager, Human Resource and Services, Adamu Salihu, Gwamna stated that the organisation was collecting data in order to establish baseline losses, customer mapping for metering and cost of service studies.
He said a stakeholders’ sensitisation forum was organised in May, and that plans were in place to hold the second forum next month.
Gwamna also revealed that the company, which covers three North-West states of Katsina, Kano and Jigawa, carried out infrastructural development projects, including the upgrade of the Shuwarin substation from 300KVA to 500KVA.
Other activities included the procurement of operational vehicles; investments in information technology for accounts and customer billing, and establishment of forum offices for customer complaints in all its business units, as well as undertaking network upgrade, total renovation and furnishing of its headquarters.
The managing director added that the company had registered and billed additional 19,969 customers since it took over and was currently carrying out daily broadcast of energy allocations from the national grid and how they were being distributed to consumers within the business units.
According to him, the company is also in the process of acquiring 100,000 prepaid meters for supply to its customers.
In his remarks, the Director-General, BPE, Mr. Benjamin Dikki, said that the purpose of the visit was to ascertain the level of compliance by the core investor with the post acquisition plan, given the value placed on the power sector reform by the Federal Government.
Dikki, who was represented by the Acting Director of Information and Communication Department, BPE, Mr. Sanusi Sule, said it was important that the obligations covenanted by Sahelian Power SPV Limited were religiously carried out.
– The Punch