Politically speaking, it is safe to conclude that the decision to alter the work schedule for technical staff by the DISCOs is a penny wise, pound foolish one as the gain, if any, from such move can never equate the loss. In the pre-privatization era, technical staff, especially lines and faults men who are on a 24-hour shift schedule, since faults and infractions can occur at any time, promptly respond to fault reports by moving to the location of fault to clear them. 
Reports from the eleven DISCOs in the post-privatization period reveal that they hurriedly downsized most of these technical staff in a bid to reduce staff cost and save money. Who does that in a sector that is essentially technical? They scrapped the inherited 24-hour shift schedule and instructed their technical staff to close after 6pm thus leaving faults reported after this time unattended to until the following day, which increased outage downtime and resulted into avoidable inconvenience for their customers. Although some may hide under the excuse of insecurity in some parts of the country to implement this policy, the primary reason is that it is thought of as a cost-saving measure. This approach does not completely come as a surprise as the primary objective of the private sector is profit-maximization.
In the short-run the decision may seem prudent since their personnel wage bill will be reduced. However, a critical view of this policy indicates that it will surely lead to losses in the long-run because increased outage downtime ought to lead to loss of revenue as there will not be revenue for services not rendered. The only reason for maintaining this policy for now is because we still have a large number of unmetered customers who are served with “estimated and crazy bills” from these service providers. If the newly-elected President fulfills his promise to eradicate this crazy practice, the DISCOs will have no choice but to introduce efficiency in their fault-clearing activities, which can be accentuated if they re-introduce the pre-privatization system of 24-hour shift duty for their maintenance men so as to attend to faults whenever they occur.  

The DISCOs are therefore enjoined to recall most their retrenched technical staff that fall within the afore-mentioned cadre to be able to clear reported faults and infractions in good time for better service delivery to their esteemed customers, which will translate into more revenue for them. It will definitely be a win-win situation!