Residents of Trans Amadi Gardens Estate in Amadi-Ama, Port Harcourt, have rejected the new metering plan that the Port Harcourt Electricity Distribution Company (PHEDC) has proposed to them because, according to some residents, “it is one new way with which the power-supplying company wants to defraud us. They want to collect more money for less power units supplied”
Wife of a retired staff of Shell Petroleum Development Company (SPDC), Mrs. Carol Charles, told newsmen that last week, officials of PHEDC came to this Estate and proposed that they were bringing in new metres to replace their prepaid ones, which they rejected as unacceptable. Their collective position was re-echoed by the estate’s management team, which replied PHEDC officials that the power cum payments situation here was stable and should not be distorted.
Mrs. Charles further informed that instead of letting the status quo remain, the officials of PHEDC, on Friday, March 5, cut-off totally the power supply to the Estate, a place where many own prepaid meters and are not owing PHEDC.
Another resident, Charles Anga was furious and asked if the PHEDC had phased out prepaid metres. “If not, why is the desperation of PHEDC to change the metres of residents of this Estate?”, saying “what PHEDC has done is totally unacceptable and so they should restore power supply immediately and urgently to the residents of Trans Amadi Gardens”.
Other residents, including the estate management team, therefore, pleaded with the officials of PHEDC to restore power supply to the estate and reduce their expenditures in maintaining their homes, adding that “over 90% of residents here own prepaid meters and so hardly fall short of monthly remittances to the power-regulating authority.”
