The Ibadan Electricity Distribution Company (IBEDC) has warned residents of Osun State to desist from using illicit meters which it said has made the power generating body to lose an average of over N130 million revenue every month.
IBEDC Regional Head for Osun, Engr. Oluwatoyin Akinyosoye, who dropped the warning at town hall meeting stakeholders in Osogbo and Ilesa on Wednesday and Thursday, expressed disappointment at the development he described as backwarding.
He stated that “IBEDC has about 15,000 of these illicit meters in its network that led to the loss which he said were gotten through the backdoor, unknown to the management till now and that most of these meters are the ones that they have to use a card for before you can load.”
“These meters consume energy and the revenue is not coming to us. That is a huge loss. If we can curb these illicit meters, we know that we can plunge back the revenue to our purse to serve our customers better.
“In IBEDC we have different interventions on metering, we have metering through the meter service providers, where the customer will pay for the meter and the cost of the meter will be refunded to them. “
“We also have IBEDC roll out intervention where we give meters free to our customers and national metering program intervention by the federal government that was the three major metering intervention in IBEDC.”
“As a company, we stopped the installation of these types of meters since 2013. So, any other one installed between 2013 till now are illicit meters”.
The regional head who maintained that, the town hall meeting was organised to sensitize people in the state about dangers of illicit meters, advised meters users to desist from using illicit ones to avoid the wrath of the concerned authorities.
“Those using the meters should come forward to address the issue because those who fail to do so will face the wrath of law.
According to him, “the message we have for those using the illicit meters is for them to come to our office to inform us about it and we assure them that we will only remove the meter and advise them on the steps to take to get a meter legally. But if we catch any customer, we will disconnect the customer, charge him or her the used revenue, and of course, face prosecution”.
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