Banner Online News

It is becoming fashionable these days to see pitiable situations of households, especially women, children, even the unmarried carrying buckets and wheel barrows with kegs going about in search of precious water in Asaba, the capital city of Delta State.

Investigations showed that the situation which is fast becoming a tradition is because these households lack water in their residences because the Benin Electricity Distribution Company (BEDC) no longer distributes electricity normally, as it’s supply of the product has become epileptic, making residents to go without BEDC’s power supply for weeks, sometimes months.

Residents who spoke to banneronlinenews.com complained that with the hike in fuel, it has become burdensome to buy fuel to power electricity generating sets.Offices and owners of business concerns are in pains because they have to power their electricity generating sets without end to keep their businesses on and then pass on the burden of making up to the customers who have to pay higher costs for products and services. to them BEDC is the standby power supply organisation.

A visit to BEDC office last week to inquire from officials why Asaba is in darkness showed a community of protesters who angrily came to express their disgust against what one of them called “the wickedness of BEDC officials.” According to the protesters, BEDC officials came to their community around the St. Patrick College, Asaba, even when they were not providing electricity, climbed through their ladder and cut and removed the wires from the poles connecting BEDC supply to their homes just because one or two persons did not pay the bill brought to them. “What about the majority that paid, must they be punished?, they complained.

Other complaints abound about the “wickedness” that BEDC, Asaba afflicts its customers on a regular basis. You find its officials cutting and taking away wires on the claims that electricity bills are not paid when indeed, the company failed to play the role of a company with integrity not supplying electricity for days and weeks. This is besides the point that some of these officials when they are broke use this as under cover to fleece money from the already frustrated customers.

Mr. Raymond Mosheri, a resident said the trick of BEDC is to supply power to an area for about two hours, just days after distributing bills in the area and pronto, their officials come the next day to cut and remove wires connecting residences. Thus, they force people to pay for electricity that BEDC did not supply. This is wickedness”, Mosheri said. Besides, he said they destroy electrical gadgets and home appliances with the shoddy and sloppy way they cut off and restore power. They can do this continuously for many times. Don’t they reason that by cutting and restoring power intermittently they destroy gadgets and home appliances? As a result the people suffer the consequences of bad services rendered by BEDC because they have to bear the burden of either repairs or doing without the appliances that have been damaged beyond repairs.

An official of BEDC who pleaded not to be named told banneronlinenews.com that epileptic power supply that has put the state capital in darkness was not the fault of BEDC. “We are only a distribution company. We distribute what is supplied to us from what is generated. And supply to BEDC has greatly fallen below what we require to distribute. This is what is responsible for the poor supply of electricity in Asaba,” the official said.

The question on the lips and expectation of Asaba residents, business concerns – small scale, medium and large scale is, who bales them out of this predicament that has brought pain and frustration to life and living in the state capital. The experience is harrowing.