The Nation Newspaper

Tag: No payment

  • Mushin residents to EKEDC: no prepaid meters, no payment

    •Police warned to stop accompanying firm’s workers

    Residents of Mushin, Lagos have drawn the battle line with Eko Electricity Distribution Company (EKEDC), over bills.

    They asked the firm to give them prepaid meters or they will not pay more than N4000 per house monthly for electricity.

    They threntened to stop further payment, if EKEDC  failed to meet their demand.

    These are contained communique issued at the end of their meeting with their representative in the House of Representatives, Bolaji Yusuf Ayinla, and his counterpart  in the House of Assembly, Olayiwola Sobur, aka Omititi.

    The meeting, held yesterday at the Mushin Local Government Secretariat, was to resolve the long standing fend between residents and EKEDC.

    Speaking on the resident’s  behalf, Secretary of the Citizens Group, Mr. Osinowo Adekunle, narrated their ordeal in EKEDC’s hands.

    He said the firm had disconnected supply to Daleko Market for about one year.

    Adekunle alleged that EKEDC officials apprehended youths who complained about poor services.

    He said: “The company also facilitated the arrest of an old man and woman, accusing them of beating up their officials. They went to the home of Mr & Mrs Muniru Lawal at 14, Yusuf Street, Papa Ajao. Baba and Mama are old people, aged 78 and 76. The two old citizens were arrested and arraigned. They were later sent to Kirikiri prison for committing no offence. How can EKEDC claim that the two old citizens beat up its official?”

    Adekunle said the solution to the “over-billing” was the metering of all the houses, adding that if the company failed to do this, the community would not pay more than N4,000 per house monthly.

    He said besides supplying customers prepaid meters, EKEDC should write off accumulated bills and reconnect Daleko and Amu Plank markets.

    The secretary said the police should not accompany EKEDC officials on duty.

    Alternatively, he said, their transformers should be attached to certificated meters, and the meters read monthly to determine the actual usage.

    Mushin Local Government Chairman,  Emmanuel Bamgboye, said the council had made efforts to resolve the matter, noting that there was a time he led the residents to protest at the House of Assembly at Alausa, Ikeja.

    He said EKEDC was finding it difficult to meet customer’s needs, stressing that the Minister of Power, Works and Housing, Mr. Babatunde Fashola, had promised the community prepaid meters.

    Sobur, who convened the meeting, said: “My office has received complaints and petitions from my constituents in respect of EKEDC and its officials bordering on lack of prepaid meters, crazy and estimated billings.

    “The objective of this meeting is to provide a platform for stakeholders to deliberate on the challenges faced by consumers in Mushin and provide a solution.”

    Ayinla, popularly called BYA, assured the residents that he would table the matter before the House of Representatives in Abuja.

    He said Fashola had promised to look into the matter.

     

  • Badagry residents stage ‘no pre-paid meter, no payment’ protest

    Some Badagry residents have threatened to stop paying their electricity bills if they are not supplied pre-paid meters.

    They staged what they called “No pre-paid meter, No payment” protest to draw attention to the epileptic electricity supply in their area.

    They said they had been experiencing irregular power supply in  Magbon in Olorunda Local Council Development Area (LCDA) of the state.

    The Magbon landlords and Tenants Association, comprising about 50 communities from Check-Point to Ile-Epo, Araromi, said members were in “shackles of enslavement.”

    The Eko Electricity Distribution Company (EKEDC), the group said, denied its members pre-paid meters, sent them “outrageous estimated bills” and threatened them with disconnections.

    The group’s chairman, Adeshina Aribifo, said: “All we need is regular electricity and pre-paid meters to read the amount of power that is consumed. Our mumu don do. We own the wires; we bought the poles and the transformers. We also paid EKEDC a huge amount of money for the installation, yet nothing good has come out of Nazareth. Enough is enough. We are using this medium to tell EKEDC officials that failure to comply with our proposition, they should not come into any of the communities that make up Magbon for disconnection, instead they can disconnect the light from the line fuse.”

    According to the chairman, the area has about 40 transformers.

    The association, he said, was prepared to liberate its communities from the exploitation.

    The national chairman, Alhaji Rilwan Ojora Akinolu, urged EKEDC to be guided by the provision the 1999 Constitution on the billing system.

    “It is called Methodology of Billing, which means EKEDC officials have to do their rating by either the use of pre-paid meter or a functioning meter, not just by calculating off-hand. Why will a 10-room building using pre-paid meter consumes N5,000 worth of power in a month, while another building without pre-paid meter is billed N20,000, sometimes, N30,000 for the same period?”

    Reacting, EKEDC District Manager for Agbara Sunday Oyeide said the firm’s position was that any community not forthcoming in terms of patronage would not get pre-paid meters.

    He implored the community to encourage its residents to pay their bills regularly.

  • No payment of bills again, residents dare IKEDC

    No payment of bills again, residents dare IKEDC

    Residents of Santos, Onilekere, Onipetesi, Valley and Punch Estates in Alimosho and Ikeja Local Government Areas of Lagos had protested what they termed “exploitation and outrageous billing” by the Ikeja Electricity Distribution Company (IKEDC).

    The protesters, who brandished placards with various inscriptions such as: “No prepaid meter, No payment”, “Evil thrives under darkness, give us light”, “Enough of one day on, two of days off”, “Replacing 15MVA Transformer with 7MVA is not acceptable,” among others.

    They called on IKEDC to urgently address their plights or risk more protest actions.

    Dressed in black clothes to express the state of black out that has continuously thrown the communities into quandary, the aggrieved protesters alleged that IKEDC staff kept bringing estimated bills despite being in black out for over 12 months.

    “It has become so bad that they give us estimated billings, they bring outrageous bills, there is a situation of five houses having a problem of total damage of electric cable yet they kept bringing bills as high as N13,000 monthly. So we are saying enough of this, if there is no power, we won’t pay. We can’t be paying for sunshine,” Chairman, Valley Estate Residents’ Association, Mike Urubusi said, adding “If we cannot get power, then there shouldn’t be any billing coming to our estates. We have been here several times, we have written series of letters to them and they have continually lied to us telling us there’s a transformer they are bringing from Epe. Later they say they are going to import transformers to areas affected and install a new one at Mangoro substation.”

    He alleged that IKEDC has refused to attend to the jaded transformer at Mangoro since January which serves a whole stretch of communities with an estimated 350,000 population according to 2006 census figures.

    “The transformer that broke down at Mangoro is 15MVA and what they’re bringing now is 7.5 MVA. How can 7.5MVA serve that stretch of communities,” Urubusi queried.

    He said the non-provision of pre-paid meters to the electricity consumers in the communities by IKEDC has led to exploitation of residents in the area through estimated billings which does not commensurate with the actual power consume by consumers.

    Another resident who simply identified himself as Amaechi said: “less than 5 per cent of houses in the communities have been provided with prepaid meters. We have written letters and dialogued with them, yet nothing has changed, we had to resort to this to drive home our demands.”

    Tosin Bada, a resident of Santos estate, said: “They put us on one-day on and two-day off (power shedding arrangement), which I have never heard of anywhere in Lagos state. Even during ‘On days’ we don’t get up to 4 hours of electricity supply.”

    The development, he said, has forced many residents to move out of the estates and “has largely contributed to redundancy among artisans and business owners in the communities as many have lost huge fortunes to the menace of power outage running into months.”

    IKEDC Head of Corporate Communications Felix Ofulue, said the issue will be address appropriately.

    “They have promised to officially send in their demands to Ikeja Electric. When that is done, we will address the issues appropriately. Protest is not a suitable method to resolve issues. Their issues will be addressed in a proper manner,” he said.

  • MOC warns states: No payment, no hostel accomodation

    MOC warns states: No payment, no hostel accomodation

    The Main Organising Committee (MOC) for the 18th National Sports festival in Lagos has said that athletes won’t be admitted into hostels unless their states showed evidence of payment.

    Elias Gora, Chairman, Accommodation and Welfare Sub-committee, told the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) on Saturday in Lagos that failure to provide proof of payment would deny athletes access to the Games villages.

    He said that about 22 states had shown the committee evidence of payment for hostel facilities.

    The states are Yobe, Taraba, Sokoto, Plateau, Oyo, Osun, Niger, Nasarawa, Lagos, Kwara, Katsina, Kano, Imo, Ogun, Jigawa, Enugu,

    Delta, Cross River, Bayelsa, Anambra, Akwa Ibom and Adamawa.

    “We are set to give accommodation to athletes from the states that have proof of payment, we want to do that as fast as possible. This is to enable us to manage the athletes as they come. We want to make it easy for them and for us too,’’ Gora said.

    Gora, who was the country’s Chef de Mission to the 2010 New Delhi Commonwealth Games, said the condition of the Games Villages were conducive for athletes.

    “ The hostels are fantastic and we commend the effort of the Lagos State Government in providing such impeccable facilities,’’ he said.