Kaduna electricity consumers have demanded compensation for the persistent collapse of the country’s national grid and the state’s epileptic power supply.
The customers made the demand at a three-day customers’ complaint summit organised by the Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission (NERC) held in Kaduna, on Thursday.
The Head of Manufacturing, R.H. Plastics Limited, Sanjeev Kumar, and another worker of the firm, Vaibhav Lakhole, expressed frustration over the inability to operate their businesses, saying that their company lost N60 million in 10 days due to the national grid collapse in October.
Kumar said, “As a production company, we rely heavily on consistent power to meet the demands of our esteemed customers. Running our machines on generators is unsustainable because of the prohibitive costs. This outage paralysed our operations and caused substantial financial losses.
“We are among the biggest consumers of Kaduna Electric, using over 500,000 kWh of electricity monthly and paying N100 million, and yet this outage has caused process wastages, quality defects, and unmet customer demands that have severely dented our business and balance sheet.
“We are not only demanding compensation but are also seeking concrete resolutions to prevent a recurrence of such disruptions. Kaduna Electric should address issues like power fluctuations, low voltage, and unexpected outages, which have significantly impacted the company’s productivity and profitability”.
Some of the Band A customers, who are entitled to a minimum of 20 hours of light per day, told Saturday PUNCH that they hardly got 16 hours of light.
They said their businesses were gradually collapsing due to inadequate power supply, urging the distribution companies to address their problems.
The Commissioner of Consumer Affairs at the Nigeria Electricity Regulatory Commission, Aisha Mahmud, explained that DisCos were not responsible for power outages and grid collapses, adding that it’s not the duty of the DisCo to compensate them.
“We are here to ensure that our customers are not unduly exploited by the utilities; we will be here for three days, and we will be resolving customers’ complaints on the spot, except for those complaints that are technical in nature and those complaints would require a sure visit”, she said.
Earlier, the Governor of Kaduna State, Uba Sani, who was represented by the Managing Director of Kaduna State Power Supply Company, Aminu Idris, harped on the need to improve power supply in the state and beyond to meet the needs of residents.
The Managing Director of Kaduna Electric, Umar Abubakar, noted that the essence of the meeting was to ensure that customers’ complaints were resolved.
