The Eko Electricity Distribution Company (EKEDC) said it has lost the estimated sum of N4 billion to vandalism of its assets as acts of vandalism reportedly escalates within its network in the last six months.
The managing director/CEO, of the company, Dr. Tinuade Sanda, disclosed that, the spate of vandalism within the network escalated in the last few weeks, especially, in Mushin, Yaba, Surulere, Ijora, Apapa, and Lagos Island.
Sanda, at a media briefing yesterday, said the company has written to regulatory authorities including the Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission(NERC), the Bureau of Public Enterprises(BPE), the Police and other security agencies about the situation.
She complained that, apart from the electricity supply gap from national grid, due to challenges such as shortage of gas supply, a drop in power generation and recurrent system collapse of the national grid, vandalism is creating service disruption within its franchise area.
She said: “these challenges have adversely affected the supply of power to our customers. However, I would like to reiterate to our esteemed customers that we are actively engaging the other stakeholders in the industry to provide solutions to these problems.”
According to her, “these cases of vandalism have contributed in no small measure to the prolonged outages in our network, leading to disruptions of many businesses, maiming/injury, and loss of lives, particularly of innocent and unsuspecting members of the public.
“This menace she continued has made it difficult for the company to provide adequate electricity to its customers whilst also posing a serious threat to its distribution infrastructure, especially the electricity cables.
“Specifically, I would like to mention that a company that goes by the name Yunusa S. Power Global Services Limited is not our agent and does not have our mandate to carry out any form of excavation on any electrical or cable installations within our network.
“Eko Disco operations are carried out only by our authorised staff and operatives who can be easily identified with the EKEDC branded coveralls and jackets.
“I am therefore calling on our customers, security agencies and most importantly the media, and the public to be vigilant and assist us in this fight against vandalism within our franchise area and put an end to these incessant acts of criminality.”
She appealed to the public to report any person or group of individuals posing as staff of Eko Disco to the company or any security agency.
On power supply, she said, the DisCo curently receive 11 per cent of present generation capacity from the national grid which she said, is inadequate to serve its customers.
She also said, the company is expanding its metering initiatives to ensure more customers are metered under the National Mass Metering Programme and the Meter Asset Providers scheme.
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