The Electricity Meters Manufacturing Company Ltd. (MEMMCOL), has called on the Federal Government to increase its support and encouragement to indigenous meter manufacturers to bridge the nation’s metering gap.
The Chairman, MEMMCOL, Kola Balogun, made the appeal at the graduation ceremony of 10 youths on a five-week Printed Circuit Board (PCB) training course in Lagos.
It would be recalled that the Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission (NERC) said that the country’s metering gap currently stands at over five million.
Balogun said that encouraging and allowing consumers to acquire meters on their own would spring up more investment in metering industry.
The indigenous electricity meters manufacturer also called on the government to license meter manufacturers to bridge the metering gap.
According to him, the Federal Government must continue to encourage local companies sufficiently or allow consumers to be able to buy meters on their own.
“If they can buy meters on their own, we will be able to invest. This means we should be licensed and most of the enterprises that are sustainable today are licensed enterprise. License meter manufacturers so that we will be able to reach more users,” he said.
He also advised the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) and development banks to seek ways of directly funding manufacturers, saying that it the surest path to reducing unemployment in the country.
Speaking on the training course, he said that the PCB fabrication design had never been done in any of the higher institutions or skill acquisition centres in the country.
He pointed that the idea behind the training course was to reposition Nigerian youths for the global digital economy.
According to him, each of the graduands is a macro business enterprise as a unit and has the capacity to design and fabricate for all the global digital industries across the globe.
Also speaking, Chairman, One Innovation Hub, Dr Waheed Olagunju, said that Nigerians needed to be well educated, skillful and healthy to eradicate poverty in the country by 2030, pointing out that the training speaks to the skill acquisition aspect.
Olagunju said: “For any nation to be productive, it needs to be skillful and the skills being imparted will enable them navigate the world better.
