Energy Minister Guntakandla Jagadish Reddy has announced that the accumulated electricity bill for the months of March , April and May covering the lock-up period can be paid in three installments of 30, 40 and 30 per cent. He made this statement on Monday, even though he denied the allegations that the bills had been inflated.
He said that the payment of the bill in installments had been made after considering the huge amount of complaints of inflated bills from consumers across the country who were unable to settle three months’ bill at once.
Addressing a press conference, the Minister said that installments can be paid at cash counters across the state, but the bill can not be part of the payment made online. “Now the consumers can pay 30 per cent of the currently generated bill in June, 40 percent of the bill in July and remaining 30 per cent in the month of August,” he said.
However, consumers need to realize that they still have to pay the bills of the current months that are not covered by the lock-down months. Representatives of the hospitality industry were also given the opportunity to seek installments by approaching the ERO office concerned.
The Minister said that Help Desks would be arranged at the ERO offices, where consumers would be able to air their complaints. “There are complaints about huge bills alleging that the government has gone back on its promise of taking an average of three months while calculating the slabs, resulting in huge bills,” he said. He clarified that the three-month cumulative meter reading has been divided by three to arrive at monthly average and each monthly average has been used to calculate the bill following the category and slab as per the Electricity Regulatory Commission (ERC) order.
“Every bill has been generated by the computers at the TSSPDCL where the calculations are made even though it is generated by the man who comes to take the meter reading. He said that bills are looking hefty as the consumers have utilised the extra power while staying at home during the lockdown period. “Some bills were generated by treating the lockdown period as 90 and some as 92. There may be an issue of computers taking a decimal here and there but overall all, the bills are genuine, calculated by taking averages,” he said.
He assured consumers that no bill had been generated after taking the total units as a whole and pushing the consumer to the next slab for calculation. Taking the example of TRS legislator G Kishore, who also had a complaint about the Rs 18,000 bill he had got, the Minister said that he had made it clear that the bill was not created by taking the cumulative total of 2347 units he had spent over the last three months, but was calculated on the basis of a monthly average of 782 units for three months.He argued that bills look inflated as summer months often display a spike in bills of electricity to the tune of 30 to 40 per cent, and this summer bills were further increased as a result of a long stay at home, with an rise of 15 to 20 per cent. It also ruled out that the government would urge the ERC to reduce tariff or waive power bills for lower income groups for the lock-down period.
