The Ebonyi State House of Assembly, Power and Justice Committees have urged the Enugu Electricity Distribution Company (EEDC) to fulfill its promise of providing pre-paid metres to Ebonyi electricity consumers.

Chairman of the Power Committee, Mr. Christian Oselebe (PDP-Ohaukwu South), made the call on Tuesday in Abakaliki while presenting the joint committees’ report on the company’s activities during plenary.

According to him, the committees sat for five days and invited officials of the Ebonyi branch of the EDDC for extensive deliberations.

“We discovered that less than five per cent of electricity consumers in the state have pre-paid metres which led to outrageous estimated billings by the company.

“The EDDC officials promised to provide the pre-paid metres to the customers before Oct. 31, as we recommend that they keep to this promise.

“We also recommend that all arrears of payment by customers as a result of the estimated billings be cancelled because the company is supposed to provide pre-paid metres to consumers.

“We also recommend that the company undertake appropriate readings of consumers who have analogue metres and stop billing them based on assumption.”

The committees, according to Oselebe, also recommend that all wires used for electricity connection in the state measure to standard, to protect consumers from danger.

“We discovered during our investigations, that most of the wires used for electricity connection in the state were between 50-75 millimetres (mm) instead of the 150 mm that is the approved standard.

“The company should also not task consumers whenever there is vandalism of its installations; it should replace the installations whenever the need arises.”

After receiving the report, the Speaker of the Assembly, Mr. Francis Nwifuru, called for its adoption.

The members accepted the report as a working document and voted for the deference of its discussion to another legislative session.

The House also passed the bill seeking to amend the Abakaliki Capital Territory Development Board Law 005 of 2007, for a third reading.

The speaker delegated its review to the House Joint Committees on Lands, Survey and Judiciary.

The House Majority Leader, Mr. Joseph Nwaobashi, read the letter from the state governor on the bill’s amendment to make Abakaliki attain true status of a capital city.

The members took turns to support the bill’s amendment to give more powers to the governor to correct several construction anomalies in the city. (NAN)

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