Lagos – Kaduna Electricity Distribution Company says it is ready to roll out mass meters starting from Friday (today).
Under the arrangement, the company will be distributing one million prepaid meters to electricity consumers in the four states of its coverage, comprising
The company said it is coming up with a scheduled timetable that will indicate when the meters will get to one community or the other because it cannot meter all the communities at the same time.
The Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer of the company, Engr Garba Haruna, disclosed this during an interaction with journalists.
According to him, customers will not pay upfront for the meters.
He said: “We are ready to roll out mass meters starting from this Friday. We are coming up with a scheduled timetable that will indicate when this will happen from one community to the other because we cannot metre communities in four states in a day.”
“Already, we have connected thousands of communities but we are not getting our money back. We are getting only 40 per cent payment in these already connected communities and that is not good for the business.”
He added: “In the next few months of this mass metering project, we are targeting 80,000. We will increase the number to 500,000 and more in three years and at the end of the day, we may end up metering one million customers in three years because we have up to one million customers in our franchise states.
“In agreement with the regulating agency, anybody that rejects metre, we shall withdraw our service and allow the person to use alternative power sources.
“Let me clarify here once again that, we don’t collect money from customers to buy equipment and people should stop contributing money at the community level under the guise of procuring electricity equipment.
“When we identify a community where 70-80 per cent of customers are not paying, we will take our service away from them. So, when you see anyone not paying or bypassing the meter, you must report such things just the way you will report when you don’t have supply because it will affect you at the end of the day.
“Our customers should get prepare for more power supply because we cannot withhold the energy once we have it. Energy being billed is the energy being consumed”.
