Chennai: Currency deadline turns disastrous

Chennai: Chennaiites on Thursday had to face the combined brunt of two events: Demonetisation and Cyclone Vardah. People who thronged the government departments, including Tamil Nadu Electricity Board and BSNL office to pay their bills with the scrapped Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes were at a loss as the broadband server was down.

People were agitated as December 15 was the deadline to use old '500 notes in hospitals and other government departments. The issue remained unsettled for a long time, as the BSNL staff were busy in protesting against the telecom department’s move of shifting the 67,000 towers to a different department, said a Telecom Advisory Committee member.

What usually takes less than a minute to pay electricity bills took more than a half hour, as the BSNL broadband server was down, resulting in formation of serpentine queues.

A consumer at the office at Central said, “I had to wait for more than two hours to pay the bill. The officials had rectified the problem only by afternoon, which made people angry.”

According to an official from the office, over 500 people had paid their electricity bill on Thursday, while a lot of others could not pay and went back home. This has also taken a toll on hundreds of people who could not pay their BSNL bill due to a technical snag. Attributing the inconvenience to consequences of Vardah, a BSNL employee said, “Our employees are rectifying it.”