The Federal Government plans to hand over the 15 successfully privatised successor companies of the Power Holding Company of Nigeria (PHCN) to their new owners by the end of July 2013.
Unresolved labour issues relating to settlement of severance benefits of workers of the various companies of PHCN has stalled the divestment process.
Minister of State for Power, Zainab Kuchi said in Abuja while denying media reports that she had projected an increase in nationwide power generation and distribution by 6000 megawatts (MW) by July 2013.
Kuchi who gave clear timelines for the eventual handing over of the various PHCN assets to investors who have variously paid the initial mandatory 25 percent part payment for the value of the assets, did not however sayd if the remaining 75 percent payment have been made by the investors.
She said: “We are finalising on labour. The labour (issue) is what is standing between us and the handing over and all the issues that were there had been addressed. We are about to begin payment, as soon as the payments are finalised by June ending, we will definitely be handing over to the successor companies by the end of July; that is the projection we have here and that is the stance of the BPE which has a timeline which was created with the labour issues in mind.
“We have taken over all the problems and addressed all the issues, the funding is there for the payment of labour and all we are doing is data computation and as soon as we are done with that the handing over will be done”.
She also denied making claims that the successor companies could not be handed over to the investors for such reasons relating to their bad shapes, adding that the preferred bidders are aware of the status of the companies while various milestones have been achieved in the privatisation exercise.
She continued: “Right now, we are generating up to 7,000 megawatts but the wheeling power is what we are trying to increase the capacity and we have explained before that this is because of the rot that that sector has suffered; the infrastructure is down and we have been doing a lot of work on it.
0 comments:
Post a Comment