TheCable

The Port Harcourt Electricity Distribution Company (PHED) says it will start visiting customers’ residence with POS machines.

Naveen Kapoor, PHED’s chief executive officer, made this known on Wednesday in Port Harcourt, Rivers state.

In a statement signed by John Onyi, the company’s manager of corporate communications, Kapoor said the distribution company (DisCo) has hired a new electricity bill collection agent to ensure easy payment of electricity bills.

The chief executive officer stated that the collection agent, on-the-spot collection (OTSC), would now collect electricity bill from the company’s customers in Akwa Ibom, Bayelsa, Cross River and Rivers states.

“OTSC, an initiative with proven success in India that has similar energy demands like Nigeria, was conceived by the FEDCO, an Indian technical partner to PHED,” he said.

“So, authorised staff will visit customers with Point of Sale machines at their doorsteps for seamless collection of payment, especially for post-paid metered customers.

“PHED has over 513,000 customers and 324,787 active post-paid metered or Non-Maximum Demand customers – which is a huge market for us.”

Kapoor said the company took the approach to eliminate the problem of lack of access to payment points by some customers.

“OTSC will ensure compliance with the cashless environment which PHED strives to attain,” he said.

“This, we believe will lead to database improvement through ‘Know Your Customer’ concept as well as increase pay points, motivate workforce and effective process monitoring.”