Residents of Alulu in Abata Nsugbe community in Anambra East Local Government Area of Anambra State have decried weeks of total darkness following alleged delay in reconnection of the private transformer serving the Alulu Phase 1 estate by the Enugu Electricity Distribution Company (EEDC).
The residents of the area threatened to protest against the distribution company for denying them the basic necessity of life even after being subjected to outrageous charges.
The private transformer committee secretary of the estate Mr. Livinus Jude Edeh alleged that the total darkness in the estate was as a result of outright refusal of the service provider (EEDC) to reconnect the residents to the private transformer owned by Mr.Daniel Ezeh for some weeks now.
He said, “The transformer was moved to its present location due to the ravaging menace of erosion in the estate leading to falling of high tension poles in the vicinity and cutting off electricity supply to various houses within the estate.
“Instead of replacing the fallen poles and reconnect the residents to the private transformer within the estate, the EEDC rather embarked on reckless disconnection of customers in the estate under the pretense that they were owing electricity bills but most residents were prepaid customers hence their actions brought untold darkness to most part of the estate.”
Edeh pleaded with the distribution company to reconnect the residents to the national grid, just as he called for individual disconnection of indebted customers rather than from the transformer that was serving everyone.
His words were also echoed by the Chairman of the committee Mr. Emeka Nwachukwu who gave credence to the matter.
Reacting, staff of EEDC who pleaded anonymity said the disconnections carried out by the staff was a routine task of disconnecting postpaid debtors and no bills customers as well
He said the removed wires were recline PVC wires that had more than one customer probably indebted to the utility company.
He said, “The EDDC technicians disconnected the recline PVC coated wires from their substation transformer in the area as no customer was authorized to pick supply from the substation transformer as it’s simply an illegal connection.
“The customer could only pick supply from other conductors outside the substation transformer at Alulu phase 1.”
He regretted a situation where customers illegally tap electricity from recline PVC wires that ran through their houses rather than connecting from the source of the supply, and probably among those customers.
“Some might be postpaid customers and are owing electricity bills hence the recline wires are always disconnected from the source and it might affect a prepaid customer illegally connected to the supply.
“Recline PVC wires is supposed to serve only one customer and not to be shared but people are fond of tapping from the nearest conductors close to their homes which is illegal,” he added.
On the utility poles, the staff added that residents repaired or replaced service poles while the company replaced high tension poles after the residents had notified them officially in black and white for them to take action.
He promised readiness of EEDC to replace the fallen high tension poles as soon as possible for better service to end users.
