Mass metering: Senate lampoons NERC over 13% performance
The Senate, yesterday, expressed dismay over the abysmal performance of the Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission, NERC, on Mass Metering Project in the country, despite N33.4 billion already released by the Central bank of Nigeria, CBN.
This was sequel to assessment made on the project at an interactive session with NERC officials and representatives of the various Electricity Distribution Companies, DISCOs at the National Assembly yesterday.
Speaking at the meeting, the NERC Chairman, Sanusi Garba, said the project which targets one million metering of houses across the country between October 2020 and April 2021, has only recorded 13 per cent implementation as at March 19, 2021.
According to him, “While 403,000 out of the targeted one million meters have have been delivered to the various DISCOs, only 127,000 have been installed, representing 13 per cent performance”.
Garba, who attributed the poor performance to delay in disbursement of fund, the chunk of which he said was made available to the DISCOs in February this year, said, “Target performance duration for the project which is phase one, entailing metering of one million houses across the country in reducing the metering deficit of 6.5 million, is six months. That is from October 2020 to April 2021.
“Though, out of the 59.2 billion earmarked for it, N33.4 billion has been released to the various DISCOs by the Central Bank of Nigeria but disbursement of the releases was very slow, which resulted in many of them accessing the fund in February.
In his remarks, the Committee Chairman, Gabriel Suswam, noted that based on the poor performance recorded so far, the essence of intervention made by the Federal Government with the N59.2 billion loan might not be achieved.
