The All Progressives Congress (APC) controlled federal government’s threat to withdraw the licenses of Enugu Electricity Distribution Company (EEDC) and others, has received the approval of some rights group in the country.
One of such rights groups is the Human Right, Liberty Access, and Peace Defenders Foundation (HURIDE) which hinged their reasons on the non-performance, exploitation of power consumers, corruption and high handedness by Enugu Electricity Distribution Company (EEDC).
Addressing newsmen in Enugu after their expanded National Executive meeting, the Chairman Board of Trustees (BoT), HURIDE, Dede Uzor A. Uzor with other members of his executives lamented that since over five years of EEDC operation in the South East, they have allegedly raked over 300 billion naira from Ndigbo without at least 12 hours steady power supply.
He recalled that EEDC had supplied consumers with standard prepaid meters in 2017, but had recalled and replaced them with fast running meters ostensibly to exploit citizens of their hard earned money.
These prepaid meters, he said, allowed the EEDC to exploits the consumers to its limit, decrying that the latest obnoxious “tamper code” compelled consumers to pay electricity bills every now and then without exhausting their credit already recharged.
He said there is a special case in Fegge, Onitsha where the human rights group learnt that occupants of a building, No.14 Orlu Street, Fegge, Onitsha with about 20 prepaid meters, who have been paying their bills promptly but later discovered to their surprise that EEDC has been charging them for eight extra meters belonging to the bungalow which was pulled down before the new four storey building with 20 flats was put up since 1990.
The EEDC, said Dede Uzor, insisted that the occupants of the four storey building must pay for the bills of prepaid meter for nonexistent building and since then, they have cut off their power and plunged them into darkness while children contracted measles and other infectious and air borne diseases linked to too much heat.
The Chairman said it was unfortunate that EEDC as a private company does not replace disused materials like transformers, poles, cables and other items, rather consumers contribute money to buy these items but for them to even install them is war.
Dede said, “Even when they wanted to install them, the same consumers are made to pay all sorts of charges, even without power supply”.
He lamented that EEDC inflicts many similar pains and worse situations on the consumers in this part of the country.
“Ndigbo are suffering in the hands of EEDC in the South East and the only way out is outright withdrawal of their licenses, give it to three or more companies which will manage power distribution in each of the states in the zone and create a competitive market”, Dede Uzor said.
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