Tina Amanda
Labour leader, Comrade Innocent Lord-Douglas has blamed the privatization of the Country’s power sector as the cause of the electricity tariff hike.
Lord-Douglas said that privatization of the power sector has made Disco and transmission companies unable to afford gas for smooth operations.
The Deputy General Secretary Senior Staff Association of Electricity and Allied Companies maintained that electricity distribution and transmission companies are paying high bills to source gas in dollars.
He noted that the federal government would have made an allocation for gas if the sector was not privatized.
According to him, “Actually, tariff increment supposed to be yearly, but why Nigerians are reacting is because of the economic hardship which is affecting everybody. If the economy was stable we would not be noticing it what we are seeing now.
“Dollar keeps rising it’s also affecting Electricity companies, the increase is coming at a very bad time and it is affecting Nigerians negatively. Some of us in the power sector never supported privatization, because we know these are some of the effects of privatization.
“Discos and the TCN are crying of gas, how are they getting the gas? How are they paying the high bill to get gas? Assuming the electricity sector has not been privatized federal government would make an allocation for gas they will use to run the system.
“Being privatized means that it’s been owned by an individual or group of persons. To source gas they pay heavily and by doing that they also increase to get back their money, but our worry is the economy is in a sorry situation.
“Power is an essential public utility Nigerians are supposed to benefit from, but unfortunately the access to regular electricity supply is not there. Our utmost concern as a labour Union is, workers of Disco’s companies are the people that will receive the brunt of this action the federal government have done.
“Since it has happened this way, the electricity managers you see are those people that carry ladder to your house and consumers assault, fight and beat them up that is where our concern lies. We are begging Nigerians not to fight our workers who are also in the same situation as they are.”
The labour leader, however, urged Nigerians to vote for candidates with economic ideas to redirect the nation’s economy.
“The solution is for Nigerians to vote in someone with economic ideas to propel Nigeria’s economy to redirect not a situation where all our assets are been sent to private individuals and they are running them as their own private company. And of cause profit is optimal when it comes to private industry.
“With the infrastructures we have if it is given a political will it’s possible our electricity become cheaper and normalized, go check our near neighbours South Africa, and Ghana what is their population and what megawatts of power do they have? Nigeria has the capacity but what we lack is the political will,” Lord-Douglas added.
