Hyderabad: Electricity consumers in the city were shocked to find a huge increase in their monthly bills recently – double or more than usual.
The reason for the inflated bills is apparently the recent strike by the contract employees, who are generally deployed to collect bills every month.
Consumers had to queue up at the Electricity Revenue Offices for complaints and get the excess amount adjusted for next month. But the ERO staff turned many of them away, asking them to get it rectified at the field level.
More than 22,000 contractual staff had gone on strike from April 26 to May 17, bringing consumer-centric works to a grinding halt.
Not just rectifying power breakdowns, but revenue collection was also hit. After the resumption of duties, the staff, who visit apartments and residential colonies with hand-held machines to calculate consumption and give bills, had to work extra hours to meet the monthly deadlines.
But as they started the billing exercise late, they calculated the consumption for more days i.e. for 40-45 days instead of 30 days. With this, the consumers who fell into higher slabs as more units were shown to be consumed (due to more days in the bill cycle).
For the first 100 units a month, the charges are Rs 1.45 per unit. Once consumption crosses 100 units, the slab becomes Rs 2.60 per unit. Similarly, once 200 units are crossed, the tariff becomes Rs 3.60 per unit and more — resulting in a sharp increase in power bills.
Normally, the billing is done between the first and seventh of every month. But for the last month, billing had not taken place even by May 11 in several areas in the city.
And with rising temperatures, consumption too shot up. This saw a change in the tariff slabs for at least 70-75 per cent of consumers, according to an estimated done by Telangana State Power Development Corporation Limited (TSPDCL) staff.
Admitting that the strike had an effect on bill collection, divisional engineers of the power utility assured that the excess amount collected would be adjusted for the month of June.
But the consumers are not satisfied. “Why should I pay for the fault of electricity staff? There should be a foolproof system that will calculate only for 30 days,” said C.R.G. Shankar from Rasoolpura, whose bill was Rs 1,550 higher than what he normally gets.
