Dr Benson Uwheru, Managing Director, Port Harcourt Electricity Distribution Company (PHED) said more than 70,000 of its customers did not recharge their pre-payment meter in the last six months.
Uwheru disclosed this to the company’s executive members at a meeting in Port Harcourt.
According to a statement by PHED’s Head of Corporate Communications, John Anonyai on Monday, the action of the customers led to the company losing billions of Naira in revenues in the last six months.
“So, how will the company continue to provide stable and quality power supply to customers when the company is not being paid for services provided,” he asked.
Uwheru said that PHED must come up with innovative means to ensure customers recharged their meters as well as collect revenues owed the company.
“So, PHED employees must be solution driven and hungry for innovation and seek more creative ways of performing their assignments.
“We must deploy every available resource to collect monies owed the company by customers.
“Henceforth, every employee has become a techno-commercial staff that should be involved in the company’s revenue drive,” he said.
The managing director said the company would henceforth conduct regular checks on customers’ meters in the four states, to checkmate energy theft and meter by-pass.
He said PHED would also adopt more stringent measures to ensure the company fulfilled the target given to it by the Nigeria Electricity Regulatory Commission (NERC).
“NERC ordered that distribution companies in the country must set and meet its N6 billion monthly target.
“So, we must deploy all strategies towards revenue drive via the transformers, feeders as well as become technically and commercially driven in our franchise area,” he added.
In another development, Uwheru said that PHED had deepened its partnership with First Independent Power Limited (FIPL) for enhanced service delivery to customers.
He said both companies met recently to fine-tune strategies of providing uninterrupted power supply in the four franchise states.
“In 2020, FIPL delivered and added one megawatt of electricity to our network while in 2021 the global energy company added another 12 megawatts to our network.
“In view of this, PHED customers, mostly Maximum Demand (MD) customers in Port Harcourt metro have benefitted from our partnership with FIPL.
“Expansion to other areas in the PHED franchise is currently being considered,” he said.