The Senate Committee on Power, Steel Development and Metallurgy has expressed disappointment that electricity Distribution Companies which took over from the Power Holding Company, PHCN, are performing worse than those they took over from.
The Committee chairman, Senator Eyinnaya Abaribe, who led other members of the committee on oversight function to Electricity companies in Kaduna said this, in Abuja, on Sunday.
He explained that the performance of the DisCos today is worse than that of the defunct state-owned NEPA which preceded PHCN in terms of revenue collection.
Abaribe, who earlier spoke at the premises of the Kaduna Electricity Distribution Company, declared that the committee was unimpressed with the discovery that DisCos are recording less than 20% of the revenues previously collected by the defunct PHCN.
The committee chairman said, “Returns on collection has reduced but the essence of privatisation is to ensure efficiency.
“Now, you are doing less than 20 percent of the previous capacity.
We were looking at better collection and better efficiency from you with Privatisation but what we are having is less than 80 percent of what we had.”
Abaribe equally expressed displeasure over the continued reliance on imported electricity meters by the DisCos at a time when local producers are complaining of low patronage and Nigeria's economy is facing a lot of problems due to the shortage of foreign exchange.
He said, “We have seen that a lot of DisCos are not doing business with Nigerian manufacturers (of meters) and these companies come to us. We talk about capacity but they must have orders first before they produce. You must look at this area.”
