Frequent Power Outage and Unregulated Billing In Kaura Namoda Community
Kaura Namoda as the second largest city in Zamfara has continue to remain in darkness and economic devaluation due to incessant power outage over the years.
It is worthy to state that, we are helpless, uncared for, and badly treated as law abiding citizens.
The Kaduna Electricity Distribution Company (KAEDCO) is operating as an oracle considering the way they handle customers with impunity, more especially our community, with neither respect to their operations guidelines nor to their customers. Thus, keeping us in perpetual darkness and charging us Mercilessly, because we have no option due to the monopoly in electricity distribution in our area.
As a business hub, Kaura Namoda is now in a sorry state in terms of power supply which cripples our economy and blocking chances of entrepreneurship thereby increasing the level of unemployment amongst youths and making the growing ones hopeless.
To be fair, we need to acknowledged the efforts of some KAEDCO staff who are always doing their best to manage the obsolete equipment in Kaura Namoda Power Station and other Sub-Station (e.g stepdown transformers) mostly using their personal tools and mobility.
To buttress our points; KAEDCO do supply Power to Kaura Namoda Community once in a while mostly for 1-3 hours (Mostly month ending) with the sole aim of getting their customers settle their Electricity Bills to avoid disconnection even when notice were not served.
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In the case of faults (e.g falling electricity poles, transformer faults,Fuses, armoured Cables etc.), KAEDCO only left its staff and customers to shoulder the responsibility of repairing the faulty equipment from their resources.
We are being Billed on (estimation) monthly regardless of whether the Power is supplied or not, and the least they are charging is N4,000 and above on a household who may not enjoy the for even 5 hours throughout the month.
There was a time early this year, when we were jubilating of improved power supply which subsequently abased and diminished. At present Kaura Namoda 33KVA Power sub-station is faulty thereby putting the community in darkness and making the operating staff to operate in more hazardous conditions.
One may begin to ask who is responsible for regulating the activities of the Power distribution Companies (DISCOS) in Nigeria? The answer here is, National Electricity Regulatory Commission (NERC) the next question may be, do they perform their duties as stipulated by law in Zamfara State? We will answer this in shoddyism as we are yet to see their impact or whether they exist or not.
The NERC is saddled with the responsibility of protecting the interests of consumers, issue licenses to operators/investors, set and review electricity tariffs and where possible promote competition as its primary duty. Which we may be bold enough to say they failed in Kaura Namoda.
Due to the aforementioned, we are calling on the relevant and concern authorities to come to our aid and salvage us from traumatic condition, so that we can have a sense of belonging as Nigerians.
Abdulrazak Bello Kaura
Publicity Secretary
Kaura Namoda Focus Forum
For Chairman
[email protected]
07030151385
