Yemisi Izuora
The management of the Benin Electricity Distribution Plc, BEDC, has promised improved service delivery to it’s customers in Edo, Delta, Ondo and Ekiti states.
The BEDC made this pledge at the graduation ceremony of the third set of BEDC graduate trainees and second set of technician trainees, held in Benin City last weekend.
In her opening remarks, Managing Director/CEO of the company, Funke Osibodu, said the company was committed to continuously render better service to its customers.
She said the employment and training of the employees was aimed at engaging the young unemployed graduates and technicians into the Discos’ business to assist with continuous improvement service to BEDC customers whilst creating employment.
Describing the graduates as the future leaders, she said :”We have so far engaged over 700 graduates and technicians and we intend to engage about 1000 in the first phase.
We give them intensive two months classroom training and after that 10 months of practical field training on the understanding of the electricity business. We are grooming them to sustain the good things we are doing. “The whole purpose is about the customers, how to serve them better. There are many areas to work on but we are improving and as we grow, we will bring more trainees”
Speaker of Edo state house of Assembly, Hon Kabiru Adjoto, who was present at the occasion, commended the initiative. The representative of the Speaker, Chris Okaeben, who is the House committee chairman on Energy and Water Resources, whilst also commending BEDC on it’s job creation initiatives, advised the grandaunts to see themselves as being privileged to be employed, stressing that they should ensure that they hold high service standards in doing their jobs without compromise. He said that a bill was under review on power theft because of incessant theft of power and the concern for the safety of Edo citizens as well as the need to ensure that more power was available to the people of Edo State.
In his remarks, Vice Chancellor, Elizade University, Professor Theophilus Fadayomi, said the university was ready to train manpower for Discos across the country. He said the university entered into partnership with BEDC because it shared the vision of the company to develop manpower.