Fashola lists 10 agenda for power sector (NIGERIA)

Babatunde Fashola, minister of power, works and housing, on Monday unfolded a 13-point agenda towards enhancing power supply in the country. Speaking in Abuja during his maiden meeting with power generation, distribution and transmission companies, and other stakeholders, Fashola said the agenda was drawn up to ensure effective monitoring of the sector. He listed the agenda as continuous public engagement on tariff collection and debts, power generation, maintenance, ancillary services, dispatch orders and discipline. Others were gas requirement and constraints, transmission constraints, 33KV load offtake, imbalance and location of excess supply, overload safety, service quality, new captive and embedded generation, franchising and other issues relevant to the growth of the sector. He revealed that President Muhammadu Buhari had directed all stakeholders in the sector to hold monthly meetings on issues concerning the industry. He said that the meeting would be rotated among the various GENCOs, DISCOs, TCN and other stakeholders across the country. Fashola said that all decisions reached at such meetings would be binding on all the stakeholders. He explained that the various companies and stakeholders would each be represented by a management member with authority to take decision on behalf of their companies, adding 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 meetings will also involve lawyers, engineers, planners and other stakeholders, while the ministry would issue a communiqué at the end of each meeting on steps taken to address challenges in the sector,” he said. Back in December, Fashola had revealed plans of the federal government to reintroduce highway tolling to raise additional funds to finance road infrastructure and ensure efficient road maintenance, saying: “Maintenance would be our watchword. We are setting up a robust maintenance regime to keep our highways in good shape. “This shows that tolling is necessary to support government funding. So, it will not be too much if we ask every road user to pay little to augment government funding for road maintenance.