NERC blames DISCOs for non-issuance of pre-paid meters

One week after a 14-day ultimatum given by the Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission to distribution companies expired, the fate of some electricity subscribers, who made payments for prepaid meters before June 2012, remains unknown.
The ultimatum given on July 19 expired on August 2.
The commission warned affected DISCOs that failure to comply with the ultimatum would compel it to institute enforcement procedures that may result in the removal of their Chief Executive Officers.
It said the ultimatum became necessary because some companies had perpetually violated its order to submit a list of all customers, who paid for meters since January 2011 and commence the issuance of meters to them.

It blamed the companies for jeopardising efforts to close the metering gap since 2011 despite the N2.9bn metering intervention fund made available to the companies recently.
In a letter to the DISCOs dated July 19 and signed by its Assistant General Manager, Media, Maryam Abubakar, NERC Chairman, Sam Amadi, noted that some DISCOs had been in “complete violation of the order as it relates to customers, who had made payments within the given time frame and have not been identified for immediate metering.
“Any DISCO that does not comply with this new directive will be barred from collecting the new electricity tariff. NERC views this conduct as totally unresponsive, and undermining the effort of the reform.
“Even when we asked for their performance report, only eight of the 12 DISCOs submitted reports that fell far short of the requirements of NERC. The rest did not submit any report of how they spent the money,” the letter said.

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