‘System Glitch’ Continues In Abuja As NERC Demands Effective Service Delivery From DisCos
By Sunday Etuka, Abuja
Electricity Customers in the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), Abuja are lamenting wrong reclassification of their tariff Bands by the Abuja Electricity Distribution Company (AEDC).
The recent upward tariff review done by the Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission (NERC) was supposed to affect only the ‘Special Customers’ who have the financial muscle to enjoy 20hours and above of electricity supply daily, however, due to system glitch, some Band D customers were reclassified to Band A.
Although, aware of the development, the AEDC pledged to effect the changes but the customers who vended yesterday told TheFact Daily that nothing has been done about it.
For instance, N3,000 that hitherto gives 40 units of electricity in the area, now gives 12.01 units, indicating that the customers have been migrated to another Band group without commensurate supply.
NERC in its Supplementary Order to the Multi-Year Tariff Order (MYTO) 2024 released yesterday, mandated the DisCos to continuously ensure upward migration of customers from the lower service Bands to Band A service level in line with the target on improvement in quality of service.
The regulator, in the Supplementary Order asked the DisCos to set up a rapid response team to ensure effective service delivery on the committed minimum hours of supply to each service Band commencing with Band A feeders effective from 3rd April 2024.
The team, according to NERC, shall ensure timely response to customers’ complaints, fault clearing and alignment with TCN regional teams for effective load management and optimized dispatch to respective feeders.
It also mandated the DisCos to publish the contact numbers of the service rapid response team for each customer cluster/business unit on its website and circulate the same to the customers via bulk SMS, commencing with Band A clusters no later than 12 noon, Friday 5th April 2024.
“Discos are obligated to publish daily on its website a rolling seven-day average daily hours of supply on each Band A feeder no later than 09:00 am of the next day.
“Where the Disco fails to deliver on the committed level of service on a Band A feeder for consecutive two days, The Disco shall on the next day by 10.00 am publish on its website an explanation of the reasons for the failure and update the affected customers on the timeline for restoration of service to the committed service level.
“Where The Disco fails to meet the committed service level to a Band A feeder for seven (7) consecutive days, the feeder shall be automatically downgraded to the recorded level of supply in accordance with applicable framework”, the Order said.
The current tariff review was due to changes in key market tariff review indices like Inflation that moved up by 12 percent from 28.2 percent in January, 2024 to 31.7 percent in April, 2024. Exchange Rate moved up from N919.39 in January, to N1,463.30 in April, showing an increase of 59 percent, Generation Cost moved up from N63.8Kwh to N103.9kwh in April, indicating an increase of 63 percent.
Others are Transmission and Administration Cost from N6.8kwh to N9.1kwh (34% increase) and Wholesale Gas to Power Prices from $2.18 MMBTU to $2.42 MMBTU (11% increase).
