During a meeting with Speaker, House of Representatives, Dimeji Bankole, at the National Assembly, Presidential Adviser on Power Sector, and chairman of the task force, Prof. Bart Nnaji, disclosed that the PHCN, as currently constituted, would be replaced by over 18 firms next year when the privatisation programme would start off.
But Bankole, in a swift response, urged the task force to accommodate the interests of generator and diesel dealers in the power sector reforms to ensure that their businesses, which he described as “multi-billion dollars per annum,” were not lost.
Nnaji listed the challenges faced by the PHCN to include huge debts, saying: “There is a high operating cost in the company, gulping over N8 billion yearly, in which workers’ salaries and pension take 80 per cent of it.”
Lamented that 70 per cent of the cost of running the sector was incurred at the distribution business level, Nnaji stressed that “the whole idea for the future of the sector is to cut a good deal for the workers for a more efficient power output for the country. When the workers would have been laid off, we would enter into an agreement with the new owners of the companies to absorb them. There is no way the new owners would work without trained and experienced workers. So, most of the workers would be fully re-engaged after entering into a new contract with the new owners.”
On the severance deal in the works for the PHCN workers, the presidential adviser declared: “We are already working out a $900 million (N135 billion) severance package for them with the CBN for appropriation in the next budget.”
Nnaji also disclosed said that several foreign investors had already shown great interest in Nigerian power sector with a view to buying in to the proposed reforms.
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