PPL owed K130 million

THE total debt of electricity bills owned to PNG Power Limited (PPL) by its customers is K130 million, says chief commercial officer Dr Nigel Booker.
He said during the Port Moresby Chamber of Commerce and Industry business breakfast in Port Moresby yesterday the strategy now was to “find, fix and destroy.”
“These are debts that we have throughout the country dating back, accumulated for 15 years.
“This doesn’t belong to any particular person in charge of or regime, or government, it is being compounded over so many years,”
“We are not writing that off, but let us change our strategy on how we actually flow back our revenue.”
“So the debt is across commercial, industry, government, everyone.” “Find, fix and destroy means that instead of going all over the place, let us use data analytic, let us use smart data driven decision making to find out exactly where our problems are, where we are losing energy, where the stealing are happening, and we can isolate it and completely eradiate it,” Booker said.
He said there were technical losses and losses due to theft.
“When we say losses to theft it doesn’t always mean the customer,
“The fast that my meter reader were not reading meter properly, I class that as theft, so we say we are trying to account for a whole bunch of electricity being consumed and it is because meters were not read properly, that is just as bad as stealing electricity.”
“We have just as much to blame, so when we are to be blamed, I take full accountability, I will come down harder internally.
He said PPL’s smart meter programme was the way forward.