ICYMI: NERC Orders DisCos To Pay Consumers For Poor Service
The Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission has said that electricity consumers can get compensation for poor service delivery when the distribution company they are connected to fails to provide 90 per cent of electricity hours due to them in a month.
This was contained in a document seen by Our Correspondent and signed by NERC’s Chairman and Commissioner for Legal Licensing & Compliance, Engr. Sanusi Garba and Dafe Akpeneye, respectively.
The document, dated May 26, 2023, said the commission would, onevery monthevaluate the average availability of the 11kV and 33kV feeders as measured by the average number of hours of electricity supplied by a DisCo per day ovoverne month.
It said the order shall be effective from 1 June 2023.
“Where it is established that the service level on any feeder in the band(s) “A” to “D” has failed to meet up to 90% of the committed service levels within one month, the customers on the affected feeder(s) shall be compensated,” it said.
It stated that compensation for prepaid customers would be a token for units of energy in Kilowatt per hour (kWh), “to account for the difference between the vented tariff and the applicable tariff for the actual service experienced in the month. The value of the token in kWh is specified in Schedules 1-11 of this Order.”
For postpaid customers, it said since bills are issued after services were rendered, the resulting bill of the postpaid customers of the affected feeders shall be issued with the adjusted applicable tariff based on the actual service experienced during the period.
It added that customers shall be notified of compensation and adjustments to their bills due to them from DisCos by email and SMS.
It added that “each DisCo shall file with the commission no later than the 15th day of the month, the monthly report of customers’ compensation for service failure effected by the DisCo in the last billing cycle.
But when our Correspondent spoke with some consumers, they said they were not aware of the order.
