Access to LEC’s Pre-pay System: The Urgent Need of Inefficiency

The Liberian Government, through the Liberia Electricity Corporation or LEC, continues to exert all efforts to restore electricity to the country, especially the Monrovia and its environs.

Towards the achievement of this goal, the government is currently making tremendous progress on the reconstruction of the hydro – expected to be completed in December this year, while some parts of Monrovia and its environs are also benefitting from electricity through a number of power plants. 

The latest effort by the LEC to further improve and expand electricity is the installation of a 10MW Power Plant project under the auspices of the Japanese Government, through its Japan Corporation Agency or JICA. When completed in September this year, the Power Plant will boost the energy sector of the country by increasing customers, as well as dropping tariff on electricity in the country, among others, especially in communities along the Somalia Drive between the commercial district of Red-light and Gardinersville.

Though these efforts are delayed, it is better late than never – and at the end of the day, Monrovia and its environs will once again return to its booming night life. But one thing which continues to be a major unending challenge to the LEC is absolute access to electricity by its customers through its pre-pay system.

Currently, customers find it very difficult to purchase power through the corporation’s pre-pay system. Access to this system is most often denied or prolong for unexplainable reasons.

While Liberians may appreciate these efforts by the government, the pre-pay system, in terms of accessing or purchasing power from LEC must be fast-tracked or less time-consuming. In other words, there should be no need for LEC customers to spend unnecessary useless hours or days in long queues just to access pre-pay cards to their
discomfort.

The system must not just be in place, but very effective and efficient to ensure customer’s satisfaction. But as it is presently, it’s a complete ‘messy’ system that over-shadows the gains made thus far – probably either due to “someone’s selfishness or administrative ineptitude”. 

We can only hope that the attention of the Chairman and Members of the LEC Board, the Chief executive Officer and Management of the LEC, as well as the President of Liberia, are already drawn to this concern so that it doesn’t reflect on the Government of Liberia in its entirety.