THE House of Representative has tasked Electricity Distribution Companies, Discos, to intensify efforts to collect debts owed by government agencies and parastatals and stop complaining about their inability to do so.
Making this call, Chairman, House Committee on Power, Daniel Asuquo, who spoke with Vanguard in an exclusive interview, wondered why disco owners were unable to collect their bills from these organisations, even when they were aware that provisions are made in the country’s budgets for such annually.
He, however, charged the operators of the Discos to disconnect government institutions that failed to pay their bills just as they do to regular customers, saying that is the only way they could continue in business.
He said: “The Discos must go all out to collect payment for electricity bills from all their customers, whether they are government agencies or not.
“They must run the discos as business and stop waiting for government directive and intervention to be able to collect debts owned by government institutions that consume their products.
“How do they collect bills from the ordinary consumers? They should deploy the same strategy in recovering debts owned by government agencies.”
Asuquo, however, noted that the current government had made provision in the 2016 budget and promised that the House would do all it could to ensure that the outstanding debts owned discos were settled.
Speaking on the position of the House as it concerns increase in billings which kicks off February 1, 2016, Asuquo said the committee was yet to take a decision, but stressed that it was important to balance business realities with the situation on ground.
He said, “Speaking from a personal perspective, despite the proposed increment, the cost of running private electricity is still higher.”
It will be recalled that a lot of government agencies including the military and paramilitary agencies have been reported to have owed discos billions of Naira.
Specifically, the debts owed the Discos by the military and ministries, departments and agencies (MDAs), rose from N32 billion to N45 billion as at the end of last year.
The Executive Director, Association of Nigerian Electricity Distributors (ANED), Sunday Oduntan, who made this known couple of weeks ago, said previously, the outstanding debt owed by MDAs was N32 billion, but has grown to N45 billion. Owing to the difficulty in collecting the debts, he also said that the distribution companies are discussing with the Presidency on ways and method of payment.
Oduntan noted that the Discos have been discussing with the government on method to offset the debt because they need that money to purchase equipment such as meters, among others, and also oil the operation to serve the customers satisfactorily
