By Mabinty M. Kamara
Amidst the increased electricity tariff, residents of Freetown have expressed dissatisfaction over the recent frequent power outages in the capital and have accused the Electricity Distribution Supply Authority (EDSA) of increasing tariffs and not improving service.
In recent months, power outage has been frequent in Freetown. The outage comes following an increase in tariff by EDSA in January this year. Businesses and homes have been severely affected by the recent situation.
Fanta Nicole, a resident of Grafton, said she was disappointed by how the authority was treating its customers.
“Trust me there is not much difference between this EDSA and the then NPA when it comes to power supply. We were happy to embrace the prepaid meter system hoping it would make them provide light efficiently as a business strategy so that customers would recharge more often. But to our disappointment they increased tariff instead of service. Whiles we continue with the erratic power supply,” she bellowed.
Like residents, businesses have also complained about the poor service EDSA have been giving.
Baibai Sankoh, a businessman, bemoaned the service he was getting from the electricity body and said he spent more just to get electricity for his business.
“To start with, the tariffs are very high not to talk of the GST. We used to buy Le 1,000,000 credit per month but now we use Le2, 000,000 because of the increased tariff price and we are really suffering as a business because we are spending more as a result and experiencing serious blackout so much so that we spend a lot of money buying diesel since our generator is always on standby,” Sankoh says.
Sankoh runs an internet café and deals in electronics. His business, Top Man USA Communications Ltd, cannot run without electricity. He said he was now spending between Le 2 million and Le 3 million monthly, just to get electricity. A price, he said, was sure to take a toll on his profit, adding: “if it continues like this we are not going to realize much as a business, considering how businesses are currently.
Ali Hassan, another dealer in electronics said the electricity supply was so erratic that he could no longer rely on it to run his business.
“There are times, light just goes off without notice. On some bad days, it will happen like three times before the end of the day. That is why we rely mostly on a generator because my kind of business requires me to test the product on customers’ demand”, Hassan said.
Since the outage started, EDSA have not issued a statement on the possible cause of the situation. Politico contacted the Public Relations Officer of EDSA, Sahr Nepor but he did not get back to us with an explanation.
Sierra Leone has two Turkish power ships on its shores that have been providing electricity through EDSA for the last 18 months.
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