Summary:
- Randall Doubayou, Former Deputy Executive Director at the Environmental Protection Agency, claims that the Liberia Electricity Corporation (LEC) has increased electricity tariffs by 76%.
- We have viewed all the relevant documents relating to the claim made by Mr. Doubayou.
- We found his statement to be misleading.
On October 30, Randall Doubayou claimed that the Liberia Electricity Corporation(LEC) had increased tariffs on electricity by 76%. He made the claim in a Facebook post along with an image of a press release from the Liberia Electricity Regulatory Commission (LERC) about a proposal for new tariffs.
The Claim
Doubayou: “In short, LEC has increased the bill of the Liberian people by 76% on total average.”
Rating Justification
To fact-check this claim, we first checked the LEC’s social media pages but found no statement or report confirming a 76% tariff increase.
We then reviewed the LERC’s Facebook page, where we found an announcement dated October 29, 2024, which contained the same image shared by Doubayou.
According to the LERC’s announcement, the LEC submitted a proposal for new electricity tariffs, seeking approval for the period from January 1, 2025, to December 31, 2027.
The LERC stated that the proposal is in accordance with Section 8.1(2) of Liberia’s 2015 Electricity Law, which mandates that a licensee may not charge any tariff without the regulator’s approval.
It further explains that the current tariff, which took effect on January 1, 2022, will expire on December 31, 2024.
An excerpt from the release states: “The Liberia Electricity Regulatory Commission (LERC) announces that on Monday, October 21, 2024, the Liberia Electricity Corporation (LEC) submitted a proposal for new electricity tariffs for the Commission’s approval.
The proposal is for the tariff period January 1, 2025 to December 31, 2027, and is in accordance with Section 8.1(2) of the 2015 Electricity Law of Liberia which states that “a licensee may not charge a customer any other tariff other than that determined or approved by the Regulator”.
To further verify the claim, we viewed a video of the October 30 edition of the Spoon Talk livestream on Facebook.
LERC’s head of Economic Regulation, Alieu Nyei confirmed at (1:19:02 of the video) stated that the Commission received an application from LEC on October 21, 2024, proposing new tariffs.
Conclusion
Based on the research conducted, we conclude that the claim by Randall Dobayou that the LEC has imposed a 76% tariff increase is misleading.
The request for an increase in the tariff has been submitted to the LERC by the LEC and it is currently under review. This proposal has not been approved and therefore no increase has been made to the LEC tariff as claimed by Mr. Doubayou.
