Aggrieved over issuance of power bills after gap of 6-8 months
TEAM HERALD
PONDA: A group of agitated consumers from Bethora confronted the assistant engineer of the electricity department office at Curti to protest against delayed and faulty electricity bills.
Led by former sarpanch Madu Khandeparkar, the aggrieved consumers complained that they were being issued bills after a gap of 6-8 months as a result of which they were unable to pay the exorbitant amounts.
They have threatened not to pay their electricity bills if authorities do not rectify the system of issuing bills in a timely manner.
“A number of people from Nirankal went to Curti to demand the scrapping of the contract system of billing and they insisted on the earlier spot billing system,” Khandeparkar told reporters.
“The Assistant Engineer Tayyab Jafar Sayyad expressed his sympathy with the aggrieved people, but said he was helpless in solving the problem except for any correction in the bills. He informed us that the matter had been raised with the Bangalore-based contractor, but there has been no improvement in this regard,” said Khandeparkar.
“The people are angry as they have to travel several times to the electricity department office to correct the errors in their bills. Some consumers received bills for a period of 8-9 months and these bills run to the tune of several thousands of rupees. Many of the residents are daily wage workers from Nirankal and they are unable to pay this huge amount at one time,” he said.
Citing two instances to prove irregularities in the bills, Khandeparkar added: “A resident, Janudatt Gaonkar from Sancorda had paid a bill of Rs 7,000 but was issued the same bill for the same period a second time. His family inadvertently paid an instalment of Rs 4,000 and later realised that there had been an error in the generation of the bill.”
“In another case, one person was issued a bill for Rs 96,000 and he had to cancel all his work and other appointments and rush to the electricity department to get his bill rectified,” he added.
A resident Hemant Samant insisted that the State government should issue bills through the earlier system of meter readers.
“In case there is a shortage of meter readers, the vacancies should be filled up so that bills can be issued at regular intervals to avoid causing any hardship to the common man,” said Samant.
It may be recalled that the residents from Priol constituency had also expressed similar grievances and had confronted the electricity department three months ago to protest against the delayed and faulty electricity bills.
