Ponda: The consumers in four constituencies of Ponda Taluka are furious with the Electricity Department for not arranging the new billpayment system in place and instead suddenly not allowing the Banks and Credit society to accept the bills from consumers forced them to go to Electricity Counter at Curti Power Substation/Office at Ponda.
The rush forced them to stand in long queues now to pay the bills at Electricity dept Counter at Curti. Locals at Marcaim Sandesh Naik, Vishal Phadte said the consumers in Villages are common layman and dont know how to pay online and with the app developed for payment of bills. The majority of the people spoken to said they only knew the mobile to receive and make phone calls. The locals from all four constituencies who were forced to stand in long queues blamed the government and power department for making online bill payment system without creating proper awareness and system in place. Further the consumer who were standing in queues said the machine accepting the bills at the Electricity counter was not accepting new notes of Rs 2000, Rs 200, as well as new notes of Rs 100, Rs 20, and Rs 10. Is this a new notebandi by government , the furious locals questioned. This is just like the same hardship and harassment faced during the notebandi period by Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
Meanwhile when contacted, an official at the Electricity Department at Curti Ponda he said there is lack of proper awareness. He too was unaware of the new system and said the new Banks which are allowed to accept bills are not become operational and have not installed net connectivity system for accepting bills. Villagers in Ponda Taluka demands that at every Panchayat level the Banks and Credit Socities should be allowed to accept the bills so that villagers are not forced to go at long distant place to make the payments of Bills.
Public unaware of Government new plans for bills and payment mode. The members of the cooperative societies reealed they were shocked to receive a notice issued by the department on Monday directing them to stop collecting electricity bill payments from the public from February 1. They were further instructed that if they want to continue to collect the bill payments, they can approach the Thane
Janta Sahakari Bank TJSB bank and enrol as agents.
