BEDC bans staff from collecting cash from customers

The Benin Electricity Distribution Company PLC (BEDC) has banned staff from collecting cash from customers in its franchise states of Edo, Delta, Ondo and Ekiti states as parts of efforts to sanitise the system.

 The Managing Director of the company, Dr Henry Ajagbawa, who disclosed this during a meeting with billing and payment agents in Benin, said agents had been engaged to collect bills from customers and not the staff.

 Ajagbawa said the company had broken the monopoly of having only one aggregator with 1, 650 agents by engaging additional 11 aggregators and 10,000 agents across the four states.

 “I do not understand why any customer will pay cash to any staff when we have advertised over and over again that people should not pay cash to any staff.

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 “If you pay cash to any staff member and you do not have evidence of payment, it will not appear in your bill when we come for enumeration. It means you have not paid and you will pay that money again.

 “BEDC staff are banned from collecting cash from any customer. Anybody who pays cash to them is simply dashing them the money,” he said.

 The MD said he could not rule out the fact that some of our staff were also fraudulent but warned that anyone caught would be prosecuted

 He explained that staff were only permitted to carry POS machines to do such transactions electronically when the company goes out on cash drive.

He also disclosed that the enumeration of customers  had begun in the Government Reservation Areas (GRA) in Benin after which about 8,000 meters would be installed.