A power expert, Princewill Okorie, has commended the Minister of Power, Adebayo Adelabu, on plans to set up a consumers’ protection unit in the ministry.

Mr Okorie who is the Executive Director, Electricity Consumers Protection Advocacy Centre, said this during an interview in Abuja on Sunday.

 He said, “I am glad that the minister plans to set up consumers’ protection unit in the ministry of power. Today, you have a department overseeing transmission, generation and distribution, none overseeing consumer protection. And consumers are the ones paying money for electricity so there is a need to have that unit and he has promised that it will be set up under the distribution department of the ministry. That will be good, if he will do that, when set up; the first thing that should be done is adequate electricity consumer enlightenment. ‘”

According to him, the Electricity Act 2023 section 119 is on consumer protection and licensee performance standards but most consumers don’t know about it.

He said that the section deals with re-connection, disconnection and complete handling service performance standards of the Electricity Distribution Companies.

He stated, “There should be adequate enlightenment because it is only consumers that understand the sector and what their rights are. For instance, how many consumers are aware that when they pay for a meter under the Mass Meter Access Provider, they are supposed to get a refund for the money they paid through credit tokens? Most consumers do not know, so DisCos deal with them. How many of them are aware of network expansion investment policy which entails that when you invest in infrastructure you recover your money.’’

Mr Okorie said that the stakeholders in the power sector kept talking about investment, adding, “Nobody can say this is what the consumers have invested. Or how many transformers have the DisCos bought and how many have the communities bought. Unfortunately, consumers’ investments in the sector are not refunded. This is not fair to the consumers. Is there punishment for the DisCos for not remitting the money that they collect from unmetered consumers because we have not seen much action on that?”

(NAN)