Electricity consumers have lamented the sudden hike in tariffs by Distribution Companies, DisCos, experiencing about 250 percent increase for all categories from Saturday June 1.
Recall that Organized Labor had cited the increase in electricity tariff as part of the grievances pushing workers to embark on an indefinite strike beginning from Monday, June 3.
Despite the stand of Labor, the new tariffs kicked off on Saturday as consumers using pre-paid meters saw the implementation of the new charges while purchasing recharge tokens.
“I just bought the N1,000 recharge that is usually 14 units, but when I loaded, it displayed just 4 units,” lamented a resident of Oyedele Street in Alimosho Local Government Area of Lagos State.
“They have deleted a whole 10 units! This is wicked,” he added.
It was observed that a business center, after realizing the implementation of the increase swiftly raised the price of computer printouts for an A4 page of document from N100 to N200.
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Mr. Richards Chuks, who runs a POS and electricity token vending outfit, also bemoaned the increase, saying “he noticed the increment when a customer came to make the purchase of electricity recharge token.”
“This customer bought N1,000 and instead of the usual N14 units, IKEDC remitted just 4.4 units. Another customer came and we noticed the increase again,” he said.
“These people have no human feeling at all. We are already battling with increased fuel, increased fees, and other services since this Bola Tinubu came into power. Now they have raised the tariff on electricity. How do they want people to cope,” he added.
Chuks noted that with this increase, it would mean that instead of a power budget of N1,000 daily, he would need no less than N4,000 to run his office.
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He however added that he has made the inevitable adjustments.
“You can see that I have already turned off the lights in this office; and the whole place is in darkness. That is part of the adjustment I have to make due to the new tariff,” Chuks added.
However, investigations showed that those who bought tariff a day before paid the usual price.
A consumer who paid N10,000 was supplied by IKEDC a token of 148.8 kWh units on Friday, May 31.
Earlier this year, the National Electricity Regulations Commission, NERC, the DisCos and the Minister of Power had announced a higher tariff of 300 percent for Band A power consumers.
Power distribution companies, DisCos, were allowed to raise electricity prices to N225 per kilowatt-hour from N68 for those in that exclusive Band.
Government had said that consumers on other bands would not be affected by any increment.
NERC explained that only electricity customers in Band A would be affected by the increase and those in B, C, D and E increase would not be affected.
Band A customers were offered an average daily electricity supply of 20 hours, even when many complain of not getting up to that quota.
However, NERC insisted that Band A consumers represented about 15 percent of the population that allegedly consumed 40 percent of the nation’s electricity.
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