Our response to COVID-19

Payment arrangements during COVID-19 pandemic

If you are struggling financially because of the COVID-19 pandemic, we can arrange a flexible payment plan and will suspend late-payment charges for up to 6 months. If you’re unable to pay your bill by your due date, contact us so we can help you by making these changes on your account. We know the COVID-19 pandemic will affect some of you financially, and we have stopped disconnections until October 1, 2020.

Emergencies

For emergencies, call us at 204-480-5900 in Winnipeg or toll-free at 1-888-624-9376.

Safety is our priority when we’re attending an emergency or safety-related call. We may need to come into your house or your business during an emergency. If that’s the case, we will wear the protective equipment recommended by public health authorities.

Emergencies include:

power or natural gas outages;

fires;

smell of natural gas is present;

blowing natural gas;

suspected carbon monoxide poisoning;

customers without heat;

hospitals, institutions, schools, or nursing homes where lack of natural gas or electrical service is a threat to public safety.

Stopping the spread

Based on the latest information available from public health authorities and governments, this is what we’re doing to help stop the spread of COVID-19:

implemented a corporate governance system for monitoring the COVID-19 situation, communications, and decision making;

situation, communications, and decision making; adopted protocols recommended by Manitoba Health, including protocols for post-travel internationally and provincially return-to-work (for personal and business travel) and other potential sources of contact with carriers of COVID-19 ;

; wherever possible, our employees are working from home to reduce employee contact;

closed our offices to the public, including the cash counter at 360 Portage in Winnipeg;

staff who respond to customer calls for service are dispatched directly from their homes using mobile workforce technology;

called off all non-essential business travel for staff;

implemented enhanced cleaning protocols for our facilities and vehicles;

scheduled more frequent, intense cleaning and disinfecting of our offices and work locations;

increased physical separation between work stations for job roles that cannot be performed from home;

employees are practicing healthy behaviour such as physical distancing and vigilant hand washing;

provided employees with hand and surface sanitizer, and other personal protective equipment, as appropriate to the job.

Any work associated with new builds or outside work will continue. Non-essential work includes, but is not limited to:

meter exchanges;

residential electrical inspections;

disconnections;

meter readings where the meter is located inside a residential building.

Reinstated services

These services have been reinstated:

commercial inspections;

residential natural gas appliance inspections;

commercial meter exchanges;

commercial maintenance;

public building leak surveys;

other work that you may request such as meter relocates and meter upgrades;

outdoor appliance inspections;

any outside work if physical distancing safety measures can be established.

Changes for our contractors

We have taken measures to protect the health and safety of employees and contractors and to impede the spread of the virus, we have advised employees to wash hands frequently, practice social distancing, conduct meetings virtually, avoid shaking hands, and maintain at least a 2 metres separation when conversing in person;

We have the following expectations of our contractors with respect to the COVID-19 pandemic and respective health and safety protocols:

adopt all protocols recommended by Manitoba Health, including protocols for post-travel return-to-work (for personal and business travel) and other potential sources of contact with carriers of COVID-19 ;

; cancel and prohibit all non-essential business travel;

implement enhanced cleaning protocols wherever applicable and feasible, including facilities, vehicles, tools, etc.;

direct staff to not come to work if they exhibit cold/flu symptoms and to screen their return to work according to the screening criteria recommended by Manitoba Health;

advise employees to wash hands frequently, practice social distancing, conduct meetings virtually, avoid shaking hands, and maintain at least a 2 metres separation when conversing in person;

minimize prolonged (more than 10 minutes), close (less than 2 metres) contact between your co-workers and other individuals in public;

provide employees with hand and surface sanitizer, and other personal protective equipment, as appropriate to the job.

These measures will continue to evolve based on advice from authorities.