North-west power consortium takes over Kaduna DISCO in August

The Managing Director of Kaduna Electricity Distribution Company (KEDC), Alhaji Mohammed Idris, last week, said that the company would be handed over to the new investors in August.

Idris made the disclosure when he received the Senate Committee on power, led by Sen. Philip Aduda.

He said that the investors, Northwest Power Consortium, had paid 25 per cent of approved bid price.

The managing director said that there were 18 national integrated power projects in Kaduna state.

``Only seven of the projects have been fully completed, while others are at various stage of completion.

``We have 106 substations injections with 915 MVA.

``The route length of the 33KV network is 8,317.14km, while 11kv is 2,729.71km and 415volts is 20,004km networks, respectively,” he said.

Idris also said the billing profile of the company as at December 2013, showed that KEDC had 321,356 electricity consumers with 199, 479 meters in circulation.

According to him, only 121,877 electricity consumers are on direct connection.

He solicited the reintroduction of free meter scheme, stressing that most electricity consumers in rural areas could not afford prepaid meters.

``Because of this, over 60 per cent of the people enjoying electricity are illegally connected due to high cost of prepaid meters,” he said.

In his response, Aduda said the issue of prepaid meters had been polictised, adding: ``if this issue is not resolved there’s no way investors can give quality power supply’’.

Aduda said that electricity consumers’ population had remained a major issue in all the DISCOs.

He called for an accurate statistics of electricity consumers nationwide to leverage the quality delivery content of privatisation. (NAN)