By Adedapo Adesanya
The Port Harcourt Electricity Distribution Company (PHED) has disclosed that it has hired a new electricity bill collection agent to ensure easy payment of electricity bills by customers.
According to the Chief Executive Officer of PHED, Naveen Kapoor, the agents will visit the customers at home with Point of Sale terminals to enable them pay for electricity on the spot.
The collection agent known as On-The-Spot Collection (OTSC) would now collect electricity bills from the company’s customers in Akwa Ibom, Bayelsa, Cross River and Rivers states.
According to Kapoor, PHED is the first distribution company to introduce the payment system to the nation’s electricity industry market.
Kapoor stated, “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.
“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, “OTSC will ensure compliance with the cashless environment which PHED strives to attain.
“PHED, as a technologically-driven company is always concerned about how best to engender customers satisfaction at all times.
“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.”
He advised customers neither to accept receipts without PHED’s logo on it nor make use of ATM cards belonging to the company’s collection agents.
