Electricity tariff: Victims of irregular billing now have rights to petition NERC- FG, Labour

The Federal Government and the Organised Labour, said following the adoption of Technical Committee report on electricity tariff for implementation, victims (customers) of irregular billing, like estimated billing by the DISCOs have rights to petition Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission (NERC).

Minister for Labour and Employment, Chris Ngige, who stated this at the end of a bipartite meeting, which held on Sunday night and spilled over Monday morning, said the Committee would be transmuted into a “standing committee” for the purpose of implementing the recommendations of the report.

The meeting between both parties was convened to review the reports of the Technical Committees on Electricity Tariff and Premium Motor Spirit (PMS).

Daily Trust reports that the recommendations in the report include: appropriate gas pricing for Electricity Generating Companies (GENCOs), which would ultimately lead to a price reduction of electricity per unit.

Ngige, while briefing journalists, also noted that it was also recommended that the implementation committee would ensure effective mass metering of people by monitoring the distribution of meters, saying there had been several complaints that DISCOs were hoarding the meters.

According to him, this would effectively check the practice of irregular billing, like estimated billing, by the DISCOs, adding that the Committee would work to put a stop to forceful migration of consumers from the low-paying bands of D and E to the upper tariff bands of A and B, by the DISCOs.

“We adopted the report of the Electricity Committee, made some adjustments and transformed that technical committee into an implementation committee. They are now the Standing Committee to implement all the recommendations they gave to us here,” the minister said.

President of Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC), Ayuba Wabba, confirmed that the parties agreed that the matter of electricity tariff would be solved through appropriate Gas pricing and mass metering.

Speaking on the template for fuel price fixing, Wabba stressed that the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) “should do everything possible to make sure the current template serves Nigerians instead of the market forces.”

The labour leader noted that the welfare of Nigerians should be the Centre point of every government policy, and therefore called on the government to find a way of “protecting and insulating Nigerians from the vagaries of market forces.”