Osun: IBEDC Decries Assaults On Staff, Facilities

The Management of Ibadan Electricity Distribution Company (IBEDC), has appealed to the public to refrain from acts of violence against its employees and facilities.

The Lead Media Relations for IBEDC, Queen Busolami Tunwase, made the appeal while addressing hundreds of their customers at a town hall stakeholders meeting in Ilesa, Osun state, on Thursday.

Tunwase who said that the electricity distribution companies provide an essential service, which is critical to the daily lives of citizens, described the issue of assault on its staff as a big challenge.

She said: “On the issue of staff assault, it is a big challenge in the sector and we are letting our customers know that it is a crime under the law. Your right end where mine begins.

“In the last one month we have about four cases of assault on our staff. Three cases in Ogun and One in Osun.

“We urge the public to maintain law and order and refrain from engaging in any form of assault against electricity workers who are primarily there to support you, your homes and businesses.”

However, Tunwase urged their customers to embrace their metering scheme and shun any act of bypassing or usage of illicit meters.

“We are here to educate and enlighten stakeholders on how to detect illicit meters in the state because it has been a challenging issue. We are here to a peak to them to stop using illicit meter and blow whistle on those using them.

“We are urging them to embrace our metering scheme. Before there had been allegation and clamour for lack of meter but right now we have meter, in Osun alone we have over 15,000 meters for our customers and they don’t need to follow the bottle neck of going for registration and all, they can just pay to designated bank accounts send proof of payment and they will get meter.

“To tackle the use of illicit meter, we have embark on dialogue, we have prosecuted those that were found guilty. We are carrying out monitoring and detection to make sure that our customers are in compliance. We are installing smart meter these days.

She however, warned staff accusing of swindling customers to desist saying the company will not take the issue of corruption with levity hand.

“IBEDC will not tolerate corruption, any form of act of swindling customers, we take that offence very seriously and when we started the whistle blowing campaign is for customers to feel free to come to us and complain to tell us of cases of impropriety from any of our staff.

“Such cases will be investigated and if the staffer is found wanting they will be shown the door. We have sack six staff in recent time, we have sack more. There are ongoing cases related to that, we will continue to sanitize the system and to ensure that we deliver excellent service.

“One of the push of this new administration of IBEDC is brand dominance and customer excellence. It is our agenda that customers don’t get treated shabbily, we need to make sure that everybody is on board so that we can get better results.