By Damilola Kushimo
After four months of enjoying regular power supply that ended 18 months of blackout, the Akinbaye community has thanked the council chairman, Shamsudeen Olaleye for replacing their damaged transformer.
Recall that in February this year, Olaleye came to the rescue of the community by providing a brand new 500KVA transformer to replace the faulty equipment.
The residents testified that the replacement has restored power and life is back to the community making it possible for landlords to receive new tenants.
It would be recalled that the landlords once complained that many of their tenants had left the community due to seemingly unending power supply while many business owners also complained of losing sales as reported by ECHONEWS.
Speaking on behalf of the community, the Chairman of the Community Development Association (CDA), Hon. Samson Fatoye, who praised the council for the replacement said the residents were happy to live normally like other communities.
Fatoye explained that although the community had to settle outstanding bill and wait for a couple of months after the transformer has been procured before electricity was restored, it took no time before social life and business activities picked up.
His words: “First, I want to appreciate God for using our council chairman to rescue us from the perpetual darkness that characterised our community for almost 18 months. Though, the transformer suffered some imbalances at installation stage but after some time, the engineers from Ikeja Electricity Distribution Company (IKEDC) got it right because the chairman, out of his good intentions, gave us a more sophisticated transformer, which the company said was too powerful.
“The required size they later brought had fault, it wasn’t functioning well but when the third one was brought, It fitted in perfectly and we’ve been enjoying light in the proportion IKEDC has been giving us since April 10.”
Asked whether the community had been able to offload the debt arrears with IKEDC – a default that compounded their woes when the transformer got spoilt, Fatoye explained that residents had shown an impressive level of compliance since the transformer was brought.
“Residents have been complying in offloading the arrears. We advised them to always pay part of the arrears whenever they want to pay their current charges. They’ve been complying. We only want to appeal for steady power supply in the community to further enhance the growth of business activities in the locality.”
Affirming this claim, IKEDC Manager for Isolo Undertaking Office, Engineer Pius Oyinloye, commented that “they (the residents) are doing well” in the process of settling their debts.”
