Jos Disco spends N8 billion on meters procurement

The Jos Electricity Distribution Company (JED) has spent about N8 billion to provide new meters in four States, which include Plateau, Gombe, Bauchi and Benue.

The Managing-Director of the company, Alhaji Mohammed Modibbo Gidado Mustapha, made the disclosure during the visit of Bureau of Public Enterprises (BPE) monitoring exercise in Jos.

Nustapha added that JED has installed about 11, 000 meters in the aforementioned states and the company would install about 100, 000 meters before the end of this year.

The JED boss reiterated that about 50 per cent of their customers would be metered before January 2017 despite having millions of customers across the states.

He also disclosed that the company has invested another N4billion and signed an agreement with local manufacturers for the provision and delivery of about 50, 000 meters that would be available in the near future.

According to him, “We got N4billion from the CBN Power Fund and we ordered about 85, 000 meters again. We have thousands and millions of customers and it will take time for them to be metered, but in the next few months, we expect 50% of our customers to be metered. At the end of the year we would make sure our industrial and commercial customers would be metered.”

He urged customers to pay their bills and avoid actions that would destabilize the distribution of electricity and to avoid things that would vandalize the transformers, meters and other electrical appliances that their company is procuring.

He appealed to the government organizations to clear their debts, stressing no investment would grow without the debt recovery.

He also urged costumers to be paying their bills in the banks and JED offices, and desist from paying JED staff directly.

Earlier in his remarks, the Deputy Director, Bureau of Public Enterprises (BPE), Eloka Chuks-Nwosu, expressed their satisfactions with the way JED is implementing the Nigerian policy on privatization and commercialization.