As the effects of the lockdown continue to bite harder on citizens, state governments have been receiving support to help people cope with the impact of the Coronavirus pandemic.
Power Distribution Companies (DisCos) have joined the list of companies helping to cushion the effects of the Coronavirus lockdown on Nigerians. The Ibadan Electricity Distribution Company (IBEDC) and the Eko Electricity Distribution Company donated food and relief items worth millions of naira to Oyo and Lagos State governments.
While speaking on TVC, the Regional Head of the IBEDC, Peter Oyelami said that the company felt obligated to assist its customers at this time, in more ways than just giving regular power supply. He said:
“As a customer-centric company, we take our customers to be very valuable and of course with this pandemic, COVID 19, the company felt it is very important that we do not only give electricity to our customers but also support the Oyo state government in the fight against this coronavirus which is why the company has budgeted enough money to buy food items like rice, indomie, semovita and so on to support the state government.”
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He further disclosed that the company’s support would not stop at Oyo State, as it plans to cover areas within its operations such as Kwara, Ogun, Osun, Ekiti, Kogi and Niger.
More details: The EKEDC also announced its donation of food and relief items worth about N150 million to the Lagos State government. The DisCo, which serves part of Lagos and Ogun States, stated that there are a number of other initiatives it had lined up to support the government in cushioning the effects of the lockdown.
Apart from the contribution of relief items, the company disclosed that direct line access to steady light would be given to isolation centres. The Managing Director/Chief Executive Officer of EKEDC said:
“I believe with people at home during this period, people would need a few things, one is electricity in their homes we are doing the best we can as we have put in charge very great men and women in our teams as skeletal services to go and support outages, detection and clearing. But the board of this company especially has had a number of different meetings to figure out how they can support so for us today this is just one of the number of initiatives that we have that the board has already approved.
“The EKEDC board has approved a budget of 150 million to do a host of different things one is the food like you have seen. In addition, we are also providing direct line access to a number of these isolation centres in addition to other relief materials. So for us, this is just a significant drop in ensuring that the lives of people especially the less privileged in our network and seeing how we can impact them.”