Electricity consumers in Uyo have been besieging the Uyo business district office of the Port Harcourt Electricity Distribution Company (PHED) along Ekpenyong Street to protest increase in the March, 2014 bill without corresponding supply of energy.
Most of the consumers had complained about more than one hundred increment of this month’s bill which was circulated since last week against the month of February this year.
One of the aged woman said her bill was raised from three hundred Naira to six thousand Naira for one room apartment which had only two lighting point and no electronics gadgets.
Another one was a pensioner who claimed to be receiving a monthly pension of seven thousand Naira, was forced to pay eight thousand Naira as electricity bill for a small apartment occupied by him and the wife only.
In a reaction, an Uyo based Journalist, Rev. Samuel Jonah, described the current PHED bills in Uyo as outrageous noting that Nigerians will not wake up one morning only to be told that electricity is no longer for the poor as it was the case with telephone some years back.
Rev. Jonah said he was not against the privatization of the Power Holding Company (PHCN) by the Federal Government but advised the new company to carry out their functions with a human face.