About 300 women residing at Tankoro Polo, also known as, Baptist Waterfront in Old Port Harcourt township, staged a peaceful protest to the offices of the Port Harcourt Electricity Distribution Company (PHED),  on Aggrey Road over lack of power supply to the area, last Monday.
The women, led by the women leader of the community, Mrs Crystal Tamuno, accused the management of PHED of issuing residents exorbitant bills despite the one month total blackout experienced in the waterfront.
Tamuno claimed that last year, they contributed money to buy a transformer for themselves after efforts to make PHED replace their old faulty transformer failed.
According to Tamuno, “we have not had light for almost one month. We contributed N2.8 million to buy a transformer last year July after being in darkness for three months and PHED refused to give us a new one.
“We negotiated with them to count our building and tell us how much each house-hold would pay, but they said they would rather give us bulk bill, which we did n’t understand and so we rejected it, but they went ahead a put a machine in the transformer which they said would help us. We later found out that machine is what they call bulk meter”, she continued.
She lamented that, to their surprise,  PHED brought “a bill of N3.4 million for February and N2.2 million for March”.
Tamuno stated that the community wanted PHED to remove the bulk meter installed in their transformer and to bill them house-by-house, “we want the removal of the Bulk meter installed in our transformer, we want to pay house-by-house”.
Meanwhile, the spokesman of PHED, Mr John Onyi, has  presenting bills to the waterfront community for services not rendered. “The bill that was given to them was based on meter reading and I tell you categorically they are owing over N500 million”, and encouraged them to pay for the electricity they have consumed.
Onyi also denied claims that the community contributed to buy a transformer, saying, “it has always been the duty of PHED to replace transformers”.
However, a staff of PHED who spoke to The Tide, on condition of anonymity, noted, “they gave them bulk bill, but when the bill came it was so high that they refused to pay, so since  January till now they’ve not got light, PHED then disconnected them”.
Our source went on to say, “it was the light committee of the community that negotiated with PHED that they need bulk bill and they put energy billing meter on the transformer”.

Tonye Nria-Dappa