PUNCH
The Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission has rolled out touch sanctions against Discos that commit infractions capable of inflicting pain on consumers.
Among other things, NERC said it would reduce five per cent of the administrative, and operational expenditure of any electricity distribution company that failed to offtake at least 95 per cent of the total energy allocated to it for distribution.
This was contained in the commission’s Order on Performance Monitoring Framework for all the DisCos.
According to the order, DisCos would now be assessed on seven key performance indicators -energy off-take relative to partial contracted capacity; revenue recovery rate; compliance with reporting of a uniform system of accounts; compliance with API feeder streaming; compliance with the order on capping of estimated bills; compliance with the implementation of forum decisions; and compliance with service standards for the resolution of complaints received through the NERC contact centre and NERC headquarters.
The order stipulated that failure to off-take up to 95 per cent of available nominations in any month will attract issuance of a rectification directive.
But the failure of any DisCo to off-take up to 95 per cent of available nominations in two of the three months in any quarter will attract a downward adjustment of DisCos guaranteed Admin OpEx by 5 per cent for the next quarter.
Also, for any instance of a customer overbilled, 10 per cent of the naira value of the total over-billing for the period will be deducted from the DisCo’s annual Admin OpEx allowance during the next tariff review, and credit adjustment for overbilled customers.
