The number of complaints received by electricity distribution companies in the country from consumers from January to June rose by 17.37 per cent to 478,415, compared to the same period last year, data collated from the Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission have shown.
The NERC data showed that the complaints received by the 11 Discos in the second quarter of this year increased to 241,476 from 236,939 in the previous quarter.
According to NERC’s latest quarterly report, the three most frequent complaint items reported by the Discos in Q2 were metering, service interruption and wrong billing.
It said the three items accounted for 58.66 per cent of all the complaints received.
“In other words, a total of 1,556 customer complaints relating to metering, service interruption and wrong billings were received every day by all Discos during the quarter,” NERC said.
It said the increase in the rate of customer complaint might not be unconnected to the improved customer awareness following the service-based tariffs, capping of estimated tariff and the national mass metering programme.
The commission said the programmes had brought to the fore issues related to service band and the mandatory hours of service availability, universal metering and limits to estimated billings.
“Other issues of serious concern to customers were service disconnection, voltage fluctuation and load shedding, which respectively account for 12.97 per cent (i.e., 31,318), 12.14 per cent (i.e., 29,326), and 7.55 per cent (i.e., 18,228) of the total customer complaints during the quarter,” it said.
NERC said it continued to monitor the implementation of the service-based tariff and the minimum remittance threshold order in the second quarter.
It said monitoring structure had been developed for monitoring all the Discos’ 11kV feeders to determine the level of compliance with the committed service levels.
The commission said, “To this end, data loggers were deployed to remotely monitor the hours-of-service availability on the 11KV feeders. The output of the evaluation will be used to gauge Discos’ investment towards improved service delivery to end-use customers, and assess the possibilities of migrating more customers to higher tariff bands while ensuring that appropriate compensations are paid where necessary.
“Similarly, all Discos are being steered continually to rapidly improve on their services being rendered and on their revenue collection from customers in order to fulfil their market obligations and mitigate financial distress in Nigerian electricity supply industry.”
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