Business
Consumers Get Free Pre-paid Meters In Abuja
The Abuja zonal office of the PHCN installed pre-paid meters free of charge for 232,466 consumers in March, its spokesman, Mr Debo Adegoke, has said.
Adegoke said that more consumers would still benefit from the free installation scheme. He explained that out of the meters installed in March, 19,659 went to consumers in Apo; 21,203 to consumers in; 13,390 to consumers in Gwagwalada; 14,142 to those in Gwarinpa; consumers in Jabi got 17,509, while those in Karu got 78,416.
In Keffi, consumers got 442 pre-paid meters; those in Kubwa got 34,155; in Lokoja, they got 114; Minna got 8,403; Suleja got 24, Wuse 24,995, Bida 11, Lafia 2, while Okene got only one meter, he added.
On frequent power outages in the country, Adegoke explained that there were only two reasons why there could be power outage in the PHCN’s network and he gave the causes as follows:it could be a planned power outage or it could be a forced one; forced in the sense that we were not expecting it, so it could come as a result of equipment failure or as a result of load shedding from the national grid.
“So if it is load-shedding from the grid, we do not have control over it or if it is equipment failure, equally we do not have control over it. It is only planned outages, what we mean by planned outage is we want to maintain our equipment, so we shut down or there is going to be construction along some lines thereby requiring taking off light to be able to do that construction or to do that plan.
“When it is planned, we have the ample time to inform our customers of our intention to shut down. But when it is forced on us we have no control over it; really at the end of it when everything is normal we can now apologise to them for what has happened and tell them the reasons.”