The Benin Electricity Distribution Company Plc (BEDC),has barred its staff from collecting cash from its customers in Edo, Delta Ondo and Ekiti.
Its Managing Director,Dr Henry Ajagbawa,who disclosed this on Wednesday during a meeting with billing and payment agents in Benin, said agents have been engaged to collect bills from customers for the company not the staff.
He noted that the company has broken the monopoly of having only one aggregator with 1,650 agents by engaging additional 11 aggregators and 10,000 agents across the four states.
“We have engaged additional 11 aggregators who will come with about 10,000 billing and payment agents across the BEDC franchise states.I do not understand why any customer will pay cash to any staff when we have advertised over and over again that people should not pay cash to any staff.
“BEDC do not collect cash, if you have to vend or pay bills, there are agents for that purpose.If you pay cash to any staff and you do not have evidence of payment, it will not appear in your bill when we come for enumeration.
‘If it does not appear, it means you have not paid and you will pay that money again. So it does not make sense to pay money to anybody and not collect receipt.l,” he said.
He explained that staff were only permitted to carry POS machines to do such transaction electronically when the company goes out on cash drive.
He implored the aggregators to be committed to the agreement by ensuring that agents are closer to customers in all BEDC operations areas for convenience.
He also revealed that enumeration of customers have begun in the Government Reservation Areas (GRA) in Benin after which about 8,000 meters would be installed.
” We have the meters ready in our store. And similar event is also ongoing in Asaba, Delta. We are taking it step by step.Understand that we probably need about N100 billion to meter all our customers, that kind of money we do not have,” he added.
