Armed Forces, MDAs owe PHCN N400bn - Reps

The armedforces, governmentministries, departments and agencies (MDAs) owe the Power Holding Company of Nigeria (PHCN) N400 billion, the House of Representatives Committee on Power has said.Chairman of the committee, Mr Patrick Ikhariale, who made this known during an oversight visit to Ughelli and Sapele power stations, both in Delta State, also reaffirmed government's resolve to privatise the power sector and assured workers of job security.According to him 'if you are owing the various components of PHCN generation, transmission and distribution, then there will be no money to pay gas suppliers. These are the same factors that led to the liquidation of Federal Government institutions.'I want to state here that it costs one million dollars for one mega- watt of electricity to be adequately generated and distributed. So it's not a 'tea party'. The average person hearing me talk about 4,000MW that is currently being generated should translate it to what it takes.'The committee also expressed surprise that out of the over N2.2 billion that was appropriated to the Ughelli power station in the 2012 budget, N1,032,724,446 had been released to the company by the Bureau of Public Procurement (BPP), saying the BPP had become a clog in the wheel of progress.According to Ikhariale, 'only the money for first and third quarters has been released. The company has not got money for the second quarter. Poor implementation of capital project is the bane of the nation.
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