Tina Amanda
Port Harcourt Electricity Distribution Company, PHEDC has called on the media and all critical stakeholders to join hands in the transformation and repositioning of the new PHED in the state.
Managing Director of PHED, Dr. Benson Uwheru, who made the call during a media parley in Port Harcourt, said the new PHED has improved its quality of service delivery both technically and is ready to light up industries for growth and sustainable development.
Dr. Uwheru disclosed that upon assumption of office on 5 July, 2022, he met monthly bills at 4.3 billion collections and by the end of August 31st, it has hit a new milestone of 5.2 billion, which was achieved through the help of people.
He further assured that the new PHED is committed to change the narrative through its core values.
“The media is one of the powerful tools for advocacy in helping us to drive our transformation agenda. I want to thank the media for their support in time past, and also to continue to appeal and crave for their support especially in the restructuring of our company.
“Port Harcourt Disco has been repositioned and designed to drive growth and development of the company’s efficiency. Upon resumption, we quickly got down to work by focusing on three major pillars of transformation which are; aggressively growth of our revenues, reducing our losses, both technical and commercial.
“We would focus on sustaining growth and liquidity to build a sustainable business, focus on standardization of our processes and quality control. We would focus on people and performance management, we believe people are our greatest assets and we require people to help us achieve our objectives which we set out for ourselves.
“It is important to note that part of the things we have focused on is our values as a company. We were able to remodel our core values and it has become our foundation for transformation.
“The power sector business is a very important business and we know the challenges in the sector, issues of meter bypass, energy theft, corruption, collusion and all kinds of limitations that impact negative on the sector. However, we are resolute and determined that despite the challenges that confront us in the sector, we have an ultimate objective to provide value for our customers.
“Our services can be better, we are aware of the complainant’s of our customers at the pay point, part of this media parley is to address some of those challenges.
“We commit and promise that our services will improve. We will do everything possible to stabilize our network to give you services you pay for. I believe strongly that the power distribution services is not a rocket science, what it demands is an intentional collaboration.
“It is a clarion call to collaborate with the new PHED as we change the face of the power business and as we give service to everyone. You members of the press are a critical stakeholders in this value change to enable us to continue to meet up our obligation across the various stakeholders network that we serve. Because if we give power, there will be industries, if we give power there will be employment, our children can go to school and there will be entrepreneurs.
“Therefore all hands must be on deck to position PHED for sustainable growth and development”.
The Managing Director, however, said the company is leveraging the opportunity to ensure all customers in the state are metered to reflect billing efficiency and accuracy.
“Part of the things we are doing in PHED is that we are also leveraging the opportunity to meter our customers. In the National mass metering program (NMMP phase zero), PHED successfully delivered on the federal government mandate.
“The (NMMP phase 1) is about to roll out where metering will be in service for our customers and we hope as we leverage the federal government intervention to meter customers, we would see to the fact that all those customers who were not captured in the first phase zero would be captured in the phase 1.
“It is also part of our plan to utilize the metering access, provide the map to provide metering for our customers as well as opportunity for access financing to ensure that we meter our customers and then reduce crisis around estimated billings and all the challenges with the fairness of billing which has become a problem across our franchise area.
“Billing efficiency is also a key area, we have procured a soft ware which is design to enhance our billing efficiency, ensure our billing is fair and reflective of the tariff we charge. We have deployed the services of our technical partner as we transform our entire metering and billing program to provide transparency and accuracy”.
