Community attacks IBEDC over outrageous billings
Except for the management of the Ibadan Electricity Distribution Company (IBEDC) takes urgent steps to restore the prepaid meter to the people of Unity and Peace Estate in Ado-Odo-Ota, Ogun State, the issue of collection of electricity bills in the area may, after all, be forgotten for now.
Occupants of the estate trooped out in their numbers to express their anger on what they described as exploitation by the distribution company. According to some of them who spoke most people in the estate have paid for the meter for over two years now and are yet to be installed.
The first Chairman and Ex-Officio of the estate, Arowolo Abdul said members of the estate tasked themselves and even went as far as borrowing money to put in place all the electricity installations in the estate including the transformers, poles, and wires, yet the distribution company still collected the sum of about N300, 000 to energise them.
And the following month they started bringing bills to the tune of over N15, 000 per month at the time without any form of compensation to the people, he narrated.
Abdul in Ogun stated that the bills had been increased to the tune of between N29, 000 and N35, 000 per month within the family, adding about 90 percent of unity and peace estate doesn’t have any tenant.
He said: “This time our people are fed up because we suffered to do all these things, and yet the company is still exploiting us by bringing crazy bills, that is why we are here today, there is no measurement for the bills,” he lamented.
The quick intervention of the police had prevented any crisis that would have erupted, the District Police Officer (DPO), Sangobiyi J.A. as he preferred to be called promised to call the two parties to a negotiating table.
The Legal Adviser to the community, Ade Yusuf, also agreed the disco collected money for prepaid metre from and after two years they have not installed it, they have been giving us crazy bills, we are here to say no meter no payment, he stated.
Business Hub Commercial Manager of the Ibadan Distribution Company, Christopher Lawal said the issue of prepaid meter was a challenge across all the Discos, according to him, no Disco has metered all its customers hundred percent, it is an ongoing issue.
