Maundy Thursday morning provided to be a nightmarish experience for many citizens at the Electricity Department, Aquem Margao, as they had to waste long hours to ensure the deadline to pay electricity bills was met without beaching it and incurring a fine.
A serpentine queue of citizens was seen from early morning as today was the last bill payment date for a few areas. Owing to the year-end holidays in banks accepting bill payments and the electricity department counters, operated by a private bank didn’t accept bills for the past two days, the overlap was caused which the electricity department proved to be a total failure to handle.
People stood on the road and police had to be called in to put some order in the serpentine queues, that didn’t spare senior citizens and ladies of the inconvenience specially in hot humid unfriendly weather.
It was only when the media (Herald included) came in the picture and questioned the electricity department engineers that some semblance developed, but it was a little too late.
By noon the citizens’ tempers rose and the presence of media gave a boost to their moods to counter this injustice and torment and they marched to question the electricity engineers.
Most of the Electricity department engineers were away from their cabins including a chamber meant for public grievances, but the tube lights and fans in these closed chambers were on, thereby proving that the custodians of electricity in the city also abet in wasting it.
A huge queue was seen till around lunch time with the electricity department offering no revision on the last date of payments and one engineer even arguing with the media and people against extension.
This comes in the wake of the electricity department’s failure in providing monthly bills, even as citizens had expressed their anguish against this inconvenience, but had patience with the haphazard functioning of the electricity department where in some cases there was a delay of even ten months in issuing bills.
The end result was hefty bills with the same repayment periods.
This is gross injustice to the common man who awaits his promised acchey din and parivartan, which by now looks only to be a pipe dream.
