Faulty power billing jhatka for 60,000

Faulty power billing jhatka for 60,000
SHWETA KAMAT
PANJIM, FEB 18: Deepak Naik (name changed) from St Inez got the shock of his life when he received a electricity bill of Rs 23,169 this month.
He immediately rushed to the Electricity Department office wherein the staff corrected the bill and was told the accumulated arrears shown was due to the faulty software from the Info-tech Department.
Same was the case with  Seema Korgaonkar,  resident of Panjim and a Panjim based journalist both of whom received the bills showing arrears in excess of  Rs 5,000 each.
If the sources in the department is to be believed, around 60,000 power consumers from Tiswadi are facing faulty billings problems after the software installed by Information and Technology (IT) department has developed a snag.
The IT Department has been repeatedly asked to fix the problem as customers are getting errant bills.
A senior official, who did not want to be named, said that all the four sub divisions of Tiswadi – Taleigao, Bambolim, Khorlim and Panjim, are flooded with consumers rushing with erroneous bills.
Sources stated that an Verna-based IT firm, which had developed the software and handed it over to the IT Department, has pulled out six months ago. “The personnel from the software firm are not available to maintain it,” officials said.
The Electricity Department has been writing frequent letters to the IT Department as the software error has messed up accounts of all four sub divisions.
It is learnt that the department is not in a position to know the exact amount of arrears left with the consumers.
“As no parallel records are maintained it’s impossible to know the arrears. The staff at the sub divisions is fed up trying to correct bills,” an official said.
The department is dogged by cases of bills being generated even though the connection has been permanently snapped.
Chief Engineer Nirmal Braganza denied that there was any problem, even when told that Herald  had faulty bills in its possession.
Meanwhile, the power department plans to outsource ‘spot billing’ to tide over the problem of not being able to give bills on time due to lack of manpower. This move has also suffered a setback as the file is still pending with government bodies.
 “The project is facing dust. Almost the entire country has adopted this scheme. Only Goa is left,” the official said.