Lucknow: As non-payment of power bills, coupled with transmission and distribution losses, keep mounting, energy minister Shrikant Sharma has taken up the issue of faulty billing and jumping meters, which are often the reasons for rising dues.
Sharma has written to UPPCL chairman Arvind Kumar to fix accountability and take action against billing companies on these issues. He has also highlighted the violation of the provisions in the agreement by billing companies.
“I will take a serious action against erring billing companies and UPPCL authorities,” the energy minister told TOI.
The energy minister has also asked the chairman not to shift the blame for non-payment of bills upon power consumers because in most of the cases proper bills have not reached the consumers.
In his letter to the chairman, the energy minister has mentioned that the UPPCL went into an agreement with 18 billing companies for providing downloadable bills through handheld machines within two years, profiling ‘know your consumer’ (KYC) details and identification of chronic defaulters.
“Unfortunately, the billing companies miserably failed on all three clauses of the agreement and the UPPCL authorities did not take action against them for this persistent failure and allowed the billing companies to function arbitrarily and harass consumers,” he wrote.
As the billing companies failed to keep up their part of the agreement, consumers were forced to make rounds of the power substation offices, delaying the payment of their dues, which is causing loss to not only the UPPCL, but also to the state government, felt the energy minister.
“Instead of 100% downloadable billing by now, in the last two years it has hardly reached 10% thus defeating the very purpose of engaging the billing agencies and above all, no action has been taken against the billing companies and the officers who overlooked the billing companies”, said the minister.
The minister warned UPPCL authorities that without proper billing, consumers should not be made to bear the brunt and in case of overbilling and meter jumping, the authorities should first install a check meter of a new company and detect the fault. Action against the consumer should be considered only if they do not pay up even after that. “Power supply should not be disconnected without taking the consumer into confidence”, reiterated the energy minister.
The minister said that it was an easy excuse to claim that one crore consumers have not paid their bills, but somebody should check how many of them received proper bills and how many of them have not even received the bills.
