When the Head, Consumer Services of the Port Harcourt Electricity Distribution  Company (PHED), Dr Godwin Orovwiroro recently told a gathering of stakeholders that the company plans to deliver 24 hour-power supply in Port Harcourt, not many of his listeners were moved.
To them, 24-hour services is a tall dream and a feat not realizable in the near future going by the firm’s current performance across the four states of Rivers, Cross River, Akwa Ibom and Bayelsa, where it covers.
A consumer retorted, “how can you talk of 24-hour supply when we hardly see the light? According to him, “for over three weeks, residents of my area have not seen light. Before then, we suffered low current supply for days and now they are talking about 24 hours light, what magic will they apply?
Orovwiroro, who was educating consumers on their rights during a consumers forum held a forthnight ago at Ernest Ikoli Press Centre in Port Harcourt, said as consumers you have right to contest unfair billing, do not have to pay to replace any faulty facility of the distribution company such as poles and transformers.
He explained further that inspite of the efforts of the company, it is confronted by myriad of challenges as inability of consumers to pay their bills promptly, vandalism, energy theft, attack on company staff, amongst others.
He said the aim of the forum which targeted professionals was to brainstorm and to find solutions affecting supply of electricity in the area.
Some participants were surprised that consumers do not have to pay for the replacement of failed equipment of PHED when out there and the field, consumers were being made to contribute money to pay for bad transformers, wires and other accessories. They accused staff of PHED of asking innocent consumers to pay.
A youngman, Chituru Ibe, said in Etche, consumers were asked to contribute fund to buy transformers and also for installing same.
“The entire people using the transformer were asked to buy transformer. It is common in many places, does it mean such money only gets into the pocket of the fraudulent staff instead of the company’s account?
The head consumer services, however fought back, he accused desperate power consumers of attempting to corrupt PHED’s staff as a way of getting back supply in event of any outage.
Noting that consumers should be patient as the company would rectify and replace faulty equipment, he urged consumers not to be desperate and  attempt to lobby or bribe the company’s field staff.
Orovwiroro urged consumers to report any company staff demanding money to replace any faulty equipment as appropriate sanction awaits such workers.
The implication is that those light committees which gather consumers within their various domains to contribute money running into millions or several hundreds of thousands of Naira are fraudsters.
On several occasion, the light committees who always have sweet and persuasive story would brain wash the gullible neighbours into paying so that they would get supply because the PHED workers would not attend to their issues as quickly as they need it done.
This story of not paying for faulty facilities by consumers has been emphasized by the government but, in practice, it has persisted. It requires a strict monitoring by PHED to arrest and deal with erring field engineers who benefit from the crime.
Some consumers are always desperate and in a hurry to get their disrupted electricity supply restored, hence fall prey to the antics of the fraudulent people who are said to have their members amongst PHED staff, community leaders, power or electricity  committees and atimes landlords. It is only by dealing with the culprits that the trend will be checked.
PHED would be doing itself a great deal of good if those erring staff are dealt with. Apart from defrauding the poor consumers, they give the firm a serious image problem.
The issue of over billing or crazy billing was also one of the issues in contention. Consumers who do not have the prepaid meters always cry of crazy billing since there can never be any acceptable measurement of services enjoyed other than the meter.
The failure of PHED to provide customers or consumers with prepaid meters helped in compounding the situation. In spite of the directive from the Nigeria Electricity Regulatory Commission (NERC) to DISCOS across the nation to provide meters to consumers, some DISCOS do not appear to observe the directive.
While few DISCOs are providing prepaid meters, PHED cannot be said to be serious on this issue of meters, if you remember its promise of providing 250,000 prepaid meters since last year.
The company has been giving one excuse after the other thereby dashing the hope of consumers. Some consumers claim to have paid long ago but that the company was yet to provide them with the meters.
They believe that absence of the prepaid meters was for unfair billing system to keep flourishing.
A resident of Ojoto street in Diobu Ugo Henry, said, “the PHED staff merely come to the yard, look around and fix any amount of bill the staff wants you to pay.
“You just begin to wonder how he determines what volume of energy you consumed without meters. I have never seen a situation where a party to the bargain would demand high price for services that are hardly there”.
In search of improved service delivery, NERC should give ultimatum to DISCOs to meter all and sanction erring DISCOs. The era of crazy billing should end. Apart from being suspicious, it does not reflect any modern business transaction. Only the NERC can save the poor electricity consumers from the DISCOs who are out to make profit not minding the standard of services it renders to its customers.
Though, the popular belief is that estimated billing is targeted against consumers, staff of PHED believe that ironically, it is the firm that loses under estimated billing because most times, customers were billed below what they enjoyed.
According to them, most consumers who get prepaid meters after agitations, turn round to complain that the meters read faster and plead they be reverted to the estimated billing because it is lower.
Which ever side that wins the argument is immaterial as what is important is for meters to be provided consumers. This is the standard for measuring energy consumption world over. If all customers are metered, there would be more confidence  that bills issued  to them are transparent and commensurate with the energy consumed.

Chris Oluoh