No fewer than 101 persons lost their lives in the last five years to power accidents under the jurisdiction of the Abuja Electricity Distribution Company.
The Managing Director of AEDC, Engineer Ernest Mupwaya, disclosed this on Sunday at the official presentation of the hosting flag for the 2018 national power safety summit to the firm.
The AEDC in its bid to attain the vision of zero fatality incidents in the power sector plans to host a global power safety summit in the Federal Capital Territory, Abuja from October 25 to 26, 2018.
Mupwaya said Nigerians lost their lives due to lack of knowledge, complacency, carelessness and compromising safety standards to their own detriment.
He said: “As a company, the issue of safety is a high priority task for us, hence it is at a directorate level and enjoys generous budgetary provisions in our recurrent and capital expenditure.
“And not just safety, we also place a very high premium on the health and environment of both the staff of the company and areas of operation.
“On a minute by minute basis, man is exposed to one form of risk or the other but the least that can be done to reduce it is to talk about it, practice it and share knowledge.”
Mupwaya disclosed that the AEDC, since inception in 2013 had carefully and deliberately raised the level of awareness and changed the mindset of the workers of the company in the area of health, safety and environment.
He said the company has invested close to N2.5 billion over five years in the provision of personal safety gears, safety equipment, total reconstruction of some shanty networks such as Kabusa and Gisiri that were inherited from the Power Holding Company of Nigeria.
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