Power: Fashola tasks stakeholders on 13-point agenda

IN his first meeting with stakeholders in the power sector, Minister of Power, Works and Housing, Babatunde Fashola has a 13-point agenda to help develop the sector.
At the meeting with power generation, distribution and transmission companies held at the nation’s capital, Abuja, Fashola said agenda involves continuous public engagement on tariff collection, debts, power generation, maintenance, ancillary services, dispatch orders and discipline.
Others areas, according to the minister are: gas requirement and constraints, transmission constraints, 33KV load off take, imbalances-locations of excess, overload safety, service quality, new captive and embedded generation, franchising and other issues relevant to the growth of the sector.
While speaking at an inaugural peer review meeting, Fashola said it would be an avenue for the leadership of the industry to interact and proffer solutions to all challenges. He said discussions at the monthly meetings will centre on the issues around scaling up the transmission capacity, improved metering of consumers, gas supply challenges, revenue collection and debts, quality of service, new captive and embedded generation and franchising, as well as dispatch procedures and adherence to discipline.
He explained that in order to minimise the cost of hosting the meetings, the companies were advised to jointly pull up resources required to hold the meetings.
The minister further said the meetings would also involve lawyers, engineers, planners and other stakeholders, adding that the ministry would issue a communiqué at the end of each meeting on steps taken to address challenges in the sector.
Under the Transitional Electricity Market (TEM), all participants in the market, which includes electricity distribution companies (Discos), generation companies (Gencos) and the Transmission Company of Nigeria (TCN) amongst others, will all have to operate in line with the contractual rules and regulations they signed up to.