PH Disco Warns Energy Thieves As Meter Distribution Begins

Port Harcourt Electricity Distribution Company has threatened to arrest and prosecute any customer that tampers with its prepaid meters distributed across Rivers, Bayelsa, Akwa Ibom, and Cross River states.

Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer of PHED, Henry Ajagbawa, stated this in Port Harcourt while inaugurating the National Mass Metering Programme.

Ajagbawa noted that the essence of the metering was to give its customers value for their money and eliminate the era of estimated billing, stressing that the company would now employ technology in tracking energy thieves so as to arrest and prosecute them.

He said, “For every single customer caught bypassing or tampering with our meters, we will arrest and prosecute. When we install the prepaid meters, customers will no longer have complaints of estimated billing, customers will only pay for what they use.

“We were running in an unstructured manner before, but now we are going to be using metrics, figures and analytics to know where the problems are coming from and attack those areas massively and when we find people bypassing, we would visit the full weight of the law on those people.”

Ajagbawa disclosed that 77,000 meters had been earmarked for distribution across its franchise area of Rivers, Bayelsa, Akwa Ibom and Cross River states, adding that no fewer than 20,00 meters would be installed monthly until the one million mark was reached.

 

He appealed to customers to be patient with the process as everyone would be metered in record time.