VINCENT ADEKOYE
19 February 2004
Benin — FIVE workers of the Benin zone of the National Electric Power Authority (NEPA) have been macheted while several others were beaten to a pulp in the last one month by aggrieved consumers.
Chief operating officer of the zone Mrs Mary Akuode, who disclosed this yesterday in Benin, the Edo State capital, said the victims were matchetted in Benin and Ekpoma while on official duties.
Briefing newsmen on the activities of the zone since the past three years, Mrs Akuode raised alarm over threat to lives and property of NEPA in the zone.
She stated that her men were no longer safe in the course of distributing bills and carrying out other official duties due to violent attacks on them.
She told newsmen that while two of the victims narrowly escaped death in the hand of lawless NEPA consumers around GRA Benin last month, the timely intervention of armed policemen and men of the State Security Services (SSS) prevented three others from being killed by another set of consumers at Ekpoma.
The NEPA boss appealed to people of the zone to stop the incessant attacks on the NEPA officials, adding that, "we are doing everything possible to improve power supply in the zone."
The aggrieved NEPA consumers claimed that they had no power supply and queried why officials of the authority should come to their houses with bills," Mrs Akiode said.
Meanwhile, consumers in the zone are owing NEPA the whopping sum of N66 billion while over N5 billion has been invested in the zone for the provision to improve services.
These included the purchase of NEPA installation equipment and transformers.
In the same vein, a total of N4.1 billion was realised as revenue from a total register of 604,784 registered consumers in the zone.
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