Monrovia – The Liberia Electricity Corporation (LEC), as part of its effort to reduce power theft and commercial losses, has elected to provide a flat rate for people, who are registered and are yet to receive their meter.
Report by Al-Varney Rogers [email protected]
This measure by the new head of LEC will increase the corporation’s revenue generation and will give customers no reason to engage in power theft.
The Chief Executive Officer (CEO), John Ashley said a flat rate will be introduced to customers who have applied and pay their connection fees but are yet to be connected.
“We are putting in place the flat rate to connect those customers who have applied for electricity and have paid their money but never received their connections.”
“The flat rate will be based on the number of appliances in your house; we will register and issue them a monthly bill,” Ashley said.
The new LEC boss said commercial losses in the company is high adding that they loss fifty percent of their revenue to power theft.
“If we generate and supply one hundred dollars of power, we are only getting pay for fifty dollars.”
“It is very, very serious for the company. We are planning to launch a power theft campaign and I’m going to engage with the Police Commissioner this week,” Ashley said.
He stated that with legal advice, they are going to prosecute those involved in power theft”.
““It will deter those who might want to engage in such act.”
“We are engaging with our legal advisor on how we can tackle this through the court system.”
“We want to tackle those people who are stealing electricity,” Ashley added.
The LEC head further said employees who are caught in power theft will be dealt with according to the law.
“We also want to tackle the small number of LEC employees, who are engaged in power theft and illegal connection.”
“We are now going to take this very seriously,” Ashley said.
He averred that huge debt owe by commercial customers is putting serious financial burden on the corporation.
He threatened to disconnect and take them to court for the money.
He disclosed that the government of Liberia owes US$5.7 million adding that they have paid US$2.5 million.
“The government of Liberia owes us US$5.7million; we engaged the Minister of Finance, he agreed to the debt and has paid US$2.5 million, which we used to purchase fuel oil to run HFO as the water level drops at the Mount Coffee.”
“We will be engaging with the government to get the remaining money,” Ashley said.
He listed the LWSC as one of their biggest debtors,.
“They owe US$1.3million.”
According to him, LEC is at a difficult financial position.
Touching on the issue of tariff, the LEC CEO said that fees charge for electricity is not going to drop now due to the financial situation the corporation is faces.
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