Benin Electricity Distribution Plc. (BEDC) has pledged efficient customer service delivery experience across franchise areas of Edo, Delta, Ondo and Ekiti States as it turned out 200 graduate trainees and technicians under the 2nd set of its Graduate Trainee Programme scheme.
At a recent ceremony held at the Best Western Hotel, Benin attended by Edo State Governor, Godwin Obaseki, the Managing Director/CEO, Mrs. Funke Osibodu
highlighted several milestones achieved as BEDC continues in its journey to improve customer service delivery experience.
The MD/CEO said the trainees were well rounded, knowledgeable and fit to lead the revolution expected in fulfilment of the core objective of the power sector privatization, adding that the programme was the end result of a fruitful partnership between Vigeo Power Academy-core investor in BEDC and Elizade University, Ilara-Mokin, Akure, Ondo state.
The objective of the academy she explained, was to train and groom existing and newly recruited young engineers, computer scientists, and other analytical graduates as well as non-graduate technicians for BEDC on the knowledge and best technical and practices for meeting and exceeding the expectations of the customers in the power industry.
In his goodwill message, Edo State Governor, Godwin Obaseki enlisted BEDC for the training of 2000 technicians within the next four years to complement the state government’s creation of 2,000 jobs.
“We like what you (BEDC) are doing. We will like you to consider expanding the programme by collaborating with the Benin Technical College (BTC),”Governor Obaseki stated, adding that the state government will provide the facilities for the training over the next four years of a minimum of over 2,000 technicians, saying that the details shall be worked out.
Chairman of BEDC board, Mr. Victor Gbolade Osibodu highlighted the fact that the power sector is a technical engineering cum commercial industry and thus it was imperative that huge investment be made on training the workers, describing training as the software of any enterprise.
As a distribution company he noted that BEDC is the face of the power sector value chain hence the need to build capacity through continuous training of staff to be able to meet up with customer expectations and manpower needs of the electricity supply industry.
In his own goodwill message, Acting Director General, Bureau of Public Enterprises (BPE), Dr Vincent Akpotaire remarked that the process of any effective development program may be slow, but stressed that with BEDC experience, success could be achieved in the power sector if all parties involved in the value chain work together.
Three trainees namely, Ogbe Eric, Emeka Ogunna and Femi Fashola emerged as outstanding trainees at the graduation.
The first Graduate Trainee programme in 2015 saw the admission of 121 graduates who were ready to learn and play critical roles in the power sector. Those young graduates came in 3 batches of 33 GTs, 42 GTs and 46 GTs to the Academy and graduated in 2015 and have since commenced in the field.
The Technician Trainee Programme was mirrored after the Graduate Trainee Programme and is a 6-12 months programme that focuses more on core technical courses. It includes amongst others 2 months of classroom training on core technical, commercial, financial, IT skills, customer relationship.
A total of 96 technicians in 5 overlapping batches, were admitted and have completed their programme as the first set of graduands for the Technician Trainee Programme.