CCD: Let's begin by sharing your thoughts on the business performance of the Company now especially as regard to your Area Office?
JU: When it comes to performance, it has constantly been on positive rise since I resumed office. As a business, we sell energy, meaning we must account for the energy given to each of our AOs. That is why when I resumed office, the energy was dropped to an average of 6350mwh and we focused on monitoring pre-paid customers with low vending and none vending in two of our feeders- High cost and village, where we identified high commercial losses because some of the PPMs have been compromised. This exercise resulted in increase in the number of ppms vending from 8,462 to 12064 in July thus, increasing ppm collections to 38M from 23M. In the same vein, our LOR and Penalties have not dropped below 1.8m compared to less then 900k in previous months. With the above done, we moved to our NPPM customers by ensuring we go after nonpaying customers from 1st to when bills distribution are done, allowing us to reduce our number of defaulters each month from 12,875 to 10,375.00 in July. The above is how Barnawa Area Office as a business has constantly increased NMD collections and performance from N83,214,954.85 in April to N94,659,401.65 in July. As a business, we would continue to improve collections and reduce losses.
CCD: What are the key area(s) the Barnawa Area Office is paying or going to pay urgent and serious attention to under your leadership?
JU: We would continue to focus on the following areas;
Staff quality of work by training, retraining and closing the supervision gap;
Promote integrity and team spirit among staffs by enforcing zero tolerance to violation of company policies;
Increase collections and reducing our ATC&C losses;
Build community relationship by constant engagement and timely clearing of faults; Ensuring all DT repairs are handled by the AO and not communities.
CCD: There is a school of thought that argued that the commitment of the staff to given assignments is barely above average, do you share similar concern and in your assessment, why is a cross section of the workers showing little enthusiasm to their assigned responsibilities?
JU: With regards to Barnawa Area Office, I would say that school of thought is not 100% correct, only a hand full of staff can be associated with the above and as a leader, I have set processes to identify them and wake them up.
CCD: The Management recently re-deployed some staff from Head Office to re-enforce Marketing and Revenue Assurance sections at Area Offices, what impact do you foresee this decision having on cash collection and the Company's ATC&C losses status?
JU: The above was a welcome development and has been able to help reduce the weight on existing staffs who were covering an average of 1200 customers and now reduced to an average of 350 customers, allowing them to effectively monitors their customers and improve collections, while reducing commercial losses.
CCD: Let look at the business aspect, how is your Area Office faring in terms of collection vis-a-vis the target?
JU: Vis-à-vis target, I would say we are constantly improving our collection efficiency and reducing our commercial losses, but with regards to technical losses our improvement is marginal
CCD: The figure was not heart-warming last year, what do you think need to be done to reverse the trend this year?
JU: The new mass disconnection task force is a welcome idea, we need to keep the tempo and push harder, the ground is already set to beat and exceed last year's performance.
CCD: Having been on the saddle for months, what are the most challenging aspects of being an Area Manager?
JU: Maintaining the network, old DTs breaking down on a regular basis, vandalization, violent and troublesome customers due to poor supply and security coverage, and Constant tempering of our meters, etc.
CCD: Is there any help or intervention you need from the higher Management?
JU: Relief DTs for our overloaded DTs; more personnel and vehicles are needed. In Barnawa Area Office, we shall require at least 9 metering staff and17 linesmen.
CCD: How about meter tampering/bypass and illegal connection, how are these twin-evils affecting the performance of the Area Office?
JU: Due to the high rate of the above, it has led us to highly overbilling our NPPM customers, thereby making our efforts to improve NPPM collections harder. In spite of our constant monitoring and penalties, some of the customers in the area are determined not to pay for bills.
However, with regards to energy theft and PPM bypass, we have been able to booked 1128 PPMs for bypass and recovered 21,497,237.00 for penalty and LOR. Our enforcement team are constantly following up and monitoring to reduce energy theft and bypass in the area office.
CCD: If you are asked to take three decisions now, what are the decisions you will take in order of importance?
JU: Meter all DTs in BAO;
Create separate 3 functional disconnection teams for each of my SC with vehicle and ladders;
Bill NPPM customers moderately till we resolve ATC&C losses.
CCD: In a few sentences, who is James Usman and what brings out the best out of him?
JU: I am a strong and fearless Area Manager that works in a difficult terrain and despite this, I am always willing to extend a helping hand to all my colleagues to create a performance enabling environment for all, which will ensure revenue growth is achieved in my Area Office . My passion and drive for success knows no bounds.
Barnawa Area Office has recorded the highest and most consistent month growth/improvement in terms of collection efficiency and response rate.
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