May 16, (THEWILL) – The Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission, (NERC), has granted approval to Distribution Companies (DisCos), to disconnect customers who fail to pay electricity bills after 12 working days.
NERC, in its “Customer Protection Regulations 2023” released at the weekend, however, warned that DisCos cannot bill a customer for periods in which the customer is disconnected.
Accordingly, a DisCo may disconnect supply to a customer’s premises when the client fails to pay the amount billed by the payment date specified on the bill, or violates other terms and conditions agreed upon with the firm.
Thereafter, the DisCos must give a notice of disconnection to customers stating date, time and reason for disconnection.
NERC said: “The following conditions must be fulfilled before Distribution Companies can exercise their rights to disconnect customers for failure to pay their bills by the specified payment date-
“The payment date must be clearly stated on the bill.
“The payment date must be at least 10 days from the date of the delivery of the bill to the customer. Bills may be delivered physically to the customer’s premises or by some other electronic means, including text messages or electronic mail, as agreed with the customer.
“The period between the payment date and date of scheduled disconnection for nonpayment is not less than two working days after the payment date.
“Any bill correcting a previous inaccurate bill shall have a payment date which is at least 10 working days from the date of delivery of the corrected bill to the customer.
“The Distribution Company must verify from its records that payment has not been made by the customer.”
“The Commission also authorised the DisCos to disconnect a customer without notice if the customer is illegally connected to the network.
“Where the customer’s connection is considered to be dangerous to the integrity of the network and/or affects the quality of supply to other customers.
“Where the DisCo is not granted access to read a meter that is located within the customer’s premises,” it said.
NERC also charged that “Whenever a customer requests a distribution company to disconnect electricity supply to his premises, the distribution company shall disconnect the supply after confirming that the customer’s request will not impact on other customers in the premises that require continued supply.
“The distribution company shall ensure that it is able to monitor consumption to the premises of the customer that has requested a disconnection that was not effected due to the impact on other customers in the premises, to assess the customer’s consumption.”
The DisCos have also received heavy criticism from the public for operating estimated billings amid shortage of miters.
THEWILL recently published that the number of ‘Estimated Billing’ customers in the books of Nigeria’s 11 electricity distribution companies (DisCos) rose to 5.93 million in the fourth quarter (Q4) of 2022, according to the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS). This represents a 3.4 percent rise from 5.74 million customers they recorded in the estimated billing category in Q4 2021; and //higher by 0.34 percent in the preceding quarter (Q3 2022) which had 5.91 million estimated billing persons.
Estimated billing is a system of arbitrary charge against unmetered electricity consumers for electrical energy they did not actually consume. The billing is based on perceived pattern of consumption, or on the ‘best of judgement’, with unjustified high revenue targets as the motive.
Sam Diala is a Bloomberg Certified Financial Journalist with over a decade of experience in reporting Business and Economy. He is Business Editor at THEWILL Newspaper, and believes that work, not wishes, creates wealth.
