Electricity consumers face prolonged power outages following the decision of the senior staff members of the Port Harcourt Electricity Distribution Company (PHED) to embark on a strike as the company announced major faults throwing Akwa Ibom State into darkness.
This is coming on the heels of an ‘earth fault’ announcement on key transmission stations that has affected all parts of the state resulting in residents being without public power supply for days.
According to a statement signed by PHED management, the power outage is due to an “earth fault on Itu, Uyo, Eket and Ekim transmission stations.”
“We are currently working with the Transmission Company of Nigeria (TCN) maintenance crew to rectify the fault and restore supply as soon as the work is completed,” the state said.
PHED announced the “earth fault” on Wednesday, August 14, while its senior staff members had embarked on strike two days earlier.
In a statement by Innocent Douglas, the deputy general secretary of the Senior Staff Association of Electricity and Allied Workers Companies, TCN, Benin region, it directed a “shutdown of PHED facilities in all their franchise states to give room for an unbiased dialogue/negotiations.”
It added that they took the decision “due to unreconcilable differences between the labour union and the management of PHED.”
The statement read in part, ” Based on this, we encourage staff of PHED to stay off offices except those required to man gates of regional and feeder offices.
It should be noted anyone caught sabotaging their efforts would be treated as an enemy of workers.
Akwa Ibom has Ibom Power Plant, a power generating company that is said to supply about 100 Megawatts of electricity to the national grid but the company is currently undergoing an audit of its activities initiated by the state government.
