By Kingsley Okoye
Abuja – The Abuja Electricity Distribution Company (AEDC), in partnership with Meron Consortium have begun installation of 222,728 prepaid meters to its customers in the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), Kogi, Niger and Nasarawa states.
A statement by Mr Ahmed Shekarau, AEDC’s Media Relations Manager in Abuja on Thursday, said the meters being deployed were valued at N10 billion .
Shekarau said the deployment of the meters in partnership with the Meron consortium, a meter manufacturing and financing company was a new phase of AEDC’s mass metering project.
He said AEDC was determined to achieve 100 per cent metering of its customers to engender public confidence in its billing process.
The AEDC media relations manager said the company had in the first phase of its mass metering project installed no fewer than 146,000 meters for its customers across its coverage area.
The Managing Director of AEDC, Mr Ernest Mupwaya said there were so many benefits associated with metering for the company and its customers.
“For customers, metering gives them the assurance of fair, transparent and accurate billing and also serves as a useful tool for managing consumption and costs.
“To AEDC, metering equips us with intelligent data to ascertain areas of energy/revenue leakages which will strengthen our commercial vigilance activities to plug such leakages and improve our revenue collections’’, he said.
According to him, metering is one of the key areas of the company’s strategic transformation programme geared toward aggressively reducing its average technical, commercial and collection (ATC&C) losses.
Mupwaya thanked PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) for the advice rendered to AEDC during the transaction and open procurement process that resulted in Meron consortium emerging as preferred bidders.
In his remarks, the Group Managing Director of Meron consortium, Mr Emmanuel Ndubuisi, assured AEDC’s management of timely delivery and installation of the meters, in line with the terms of its contract.
“We appreciate the opportunity AEDC has given us through a transparent and competitive process.
“We’ll bring all our wealth of experience and expertise on board to ensure the success of this project because our goal is that ultimately, AEDC will count on us as your preferred partner for all future metering projects.’’ (NAN)