IBEDC decries N130m monthly revenue loss to illicit meters

The Ibadan Electricity Distribution Company (IBEDC) has decried the monthly  loss of over N130 million revenue due to use of “illicit meters” by some electricity consumers.

IBEDC Regional Manager for Osun,Mr Oluwatoyin Akinyosoye, condemned the practice at a stakeholders’ town hall meeting on Wednesday in Osogbo.

Akinyosoye said that the town hall meeting was organised to draw attention of the consuming public to those who engage in the sabotage of its operations.

According to him, in Osun there are 15,000 illicit meters causing the company an average revenue loss of N130 million on monthly basis.

“To us as a company, this is huge loss in our revenue because this illicit meters consume energy on our network, but the revenue is not coming to us.

“If we can curb the use of these illicit meters, then we can take the revenue back to the company, improve on our network and embark on other metering interventions to serve our customers,”he said.

The Regional Manager said that the unregistered meters were not supplied to consumers by the company, explaining that IBEDC had different intervention on metering through which customers could obtain their meters.

He said customers  could get metered through “meter self provider” whereby customers pay and get metered and the cost of the meter would be refunded to them over a period of time.

Akinyosoye also said that prospective customers could benefit from the IBEDC roll out meter intervention, whereby meters were given to customers for free.

He said  that the  recently concluded national mass metering programme by the Federal Government  was another avenue customers could get meters.

“As a company, we have  stopped this Non-Standard Transfer System meter  in 2013.

“So every of this meter, that you have to use a card before you can load and that was installed between 2013 till now are illicit meter,” the official said.

Akinyosoye advised electricity consumers who have such illicit meters to visit the IBEDC to find out how it could be replaced.

“But any customer that we discover using the illicit meter would have his or her supply disconnected, charged for loss of revenue, pay for penalty and of course face prosecution,” he said.

Some of the  IBEDC customers at the meeting who spoke with NAN urged the company to do more to serve them better.