Abuja Electricity Distribution Company Plc (AEDC) has acquired 2.4 million euros (about N1.025 billion) Integrated Commercial Management System (InCMS) while training 47 staff to enhance its database, curb energy theft, accelerate metering and improve its customer services.
The Strategic and Technical Advisor to the MD/CEO of AEDC, Dr George Nguni who disclosed this on Monday in Abuja said the project on its activation on November 26, 2018 will centralise the database of electricity customers in the franchise area for better service.
Dr. Nguni who is also the Project Manager of INCMS said 47 AEDC staff are being trained on handling the system and they will retrain other staff across the business units.
“This will help us to also aggregate our data with information from metered transformers and feeders so we can access energy loss and resolve such,” Nguni said on the project’s impact in reducing the Aggregate Technical Commercial and Collection (ATC&C) losses of the DisCo.
The General Manager, Customer Service, Mrs Safiya Bello said new customers’ properties are given a Service Point Number (SPN) and a reference code while existing customers are being migrated into the system.
She said the system has been in use in 104 countries worldwide and 14 African countries including Ghana, Zambia and Kenya. With the activation by November, Nigeria will be the 15th African country while AEDC will become the first of the 11 DisCos to adopt it, Mrs Bello noted.
INCMS Project Secretary, Mimi Angyu said the rampant sales of meters by fraudsters was addressed in the system as meters are registered in a virtual warehouse and programmed with GPS for only a particular property to eliminate fraud.
The MD/CEO of Copperbelt Energy Corporation (CEC), core investor of AEDC, Engr. Emmanuel Katepa said, “A very huge chunk of this project is removing the discretion of junior officers tampering with customer service process and that could reduce our losses greatly.”
The system will largely eliminate junior field staff who will be tracked and monitored by managers to improve service efficiency of the DisCo, he noted.
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