By Bilesanmi Abayomi
Oloye Salami Oluwaseun, a concerned citizen, has written an open letter to the Ikeja Electricity Distribution Company (IKEDC), calling for transparency in the monthly estimated bills given to electricity consumers. Salami expressed his concern about the lack of clarity in the parameters for computing estimated bills, which he said made it easy for fraudulent manipulation and exploitation of customers.
Salami observed that IKEDC has installed meters on transformers serving different communities, which makes it easy to compute the aggregate consumption on a particular transformer for a given month. He added that the electricity consumption is then divided equally among customers without prepaid meters using that transformer.
However, he pointed out that customers already on prepaid meters have also had their consumption captured by the meter installed on the transformer. Salami argued that this should be taken into consideration when calculating bills for customers without meters.
He called on the IKEDC to provide clarity on how they deduct the element of bills that have already been paid for by prepaid customers using the same transformer. Salami said this would help to preserve and boost customer confidence, remove any iota of opaqueness from the billing system, and encourage compliance by customers.
He further stated that greater transparency in the operation of the IKEDC would improve the company’s customer relationship rating by the public, sustain trust, and ensure that customers pay up their accumulated bills.
As of now, the IKEDC is yet to release any official statement in response to Salami’s letter. It remains to be seen how the company will address the concerns raised by the concerned citizen.