Concerned about the increasing report of some fraudulent individuals forging its electricity bill for account opening purposes, the management of the Enugu Electricity Distribution Company (EEDC) has cautioned banks and other related institutions where its electricity bills are used as proof of address to ensure that they confirm these documents with EEDC before accepting such as authentic.
A statement signed by its Head, Communications, Emeka Ezeh, and made available to THISDAY, said there had been situations where staff of EEDC (marketers) whose names and phone numbers appear on the electricity bills for ease of customer engagement, are embarrassed and sometimes detained by police in the course of carrying out their investigation on fraud cases where a forged EEDC electricity bills were used.
According to him, “We just recorded three such cases in Aba, and there is every possibility that this is also happening unnoticed at other locations within our franchise area.
“To check this growing trend, we appeal to banks to be cautious and ensure they carry out extensive check and verification of any EEDC electricity bill tendered for account opening purpose as proof of address.
“EEDC will therefore not be liable if any criminal or fraudulent activity is perpetrated with any forged electricity bill.
“It will be recalled that as part of initiatives geared towards ensuring enjoyable customer experience, EEDC recently modified its electricity bill to wear a new look.
“The refreshed two-sided A5 sized electricity bill which took effect in September, 2017, has additional features which include a summary of previous balance and last payment made by the customer, a barcode which is a security feature, details of feeder and transformer serving the customer; name and phone number of the marketer in charge, as well as pictorial representation of customer’s meter reading.â€
