Htderabad: The huge electricity bills confronting citizens gobbling up one-third of their monthly income in some cases is making life very difficult particularly with water charges and food prices on a constant upward spiral too.
With the huge tariff increase plus two simultaneous FSA charges, electricity bills are in the range of Rs 2000 to Rs15,000 for a medium-sized household. Citizens claim they are paying three times the usual amount, and are asking for their bills to be rechecked.
“It is not possible for any middle-class person to pay an electricity bill of Rs 15,200 in one month,” says Maria Seetharaman from Motinagar. “With a two-bedroom house with two air-conditioners and other basic appliances, I was expecting a bill of around Rs 6,000-7,000 at the most.
Last year the highest bill paid by me in a single month was Rs 7,000, but this year it has more than doubled. From 476 units consumed in the month of May, the number of units has gone up suddenly to 1,800. This kind of bill is unbelievable. I want to know if the Chief Minister and other ministers are paying the same kind of bills,” rued the agitated homemaker.
Shadab Husssain from Masab tank is also horrified at his electricity bill. “From a bill of Rs 700 a month, my bill has shot up to Rs 5000 even though we do not have an AC for a 2 bhk house. We do not even use a washing machine. This kind of bill for using a television, three fans, a refrigerator, tubelights and laptop sounds like an inflated bill. I have asked for a recheck of the bill. With these kinds of expenses, living in this city is not sustainable any more.”
APCPDCL has started getting bill related complaints and is running rechecks for many consumers. Though it is too early to trace a billing pattern for this month, officials indicate that bill payments are being held up.
Rs 2,200 crore in unpaid bills trouble discoms
Hyderabad: Discoms are in a quandary. Faced with huge losses and a pile up of electricity dues by industries, government departments and VIPs who haven’t paid their bills, they don’t know how to handle the mess. The unpaid bills from the categories amount to a whopping Rs 2,200 crore, of which a huge chunk is pending from government departments.
With directions from higher ups to ensure power supply to government departments, discoms are unable to apply aggressive methods. In fact, sources say many MLAs are among the influential who haven’t been touched so far. But when it comes to domestic consumers, it’s a different story. Power is being cut off and more stringent measures planned.
The central discom, in a bid to manage its finances better, is now exploring the idea of introducing pre-paid meters for the government departments so that they can plan in advance. Last year the discom was given strict orders not to be lenient with any department. So after serving adequate notices to the government departments, it started resorting to disconnecting their power supply. This didn’t go down well and they had to ease up.
But the strict measures did have some effect. “The government bills, which had crossed 800 crores last year, have come down to 719 crores this year due to the stringent measures. However dealing with the VIPs is turning out to be difficult. There is pendency from more than 30 political biggies,” said a source.
The energy department has charted out a pre-paid meter system to be used for the government departments and for big defaulters so that they can only use energy as per their available finances. The scheme will be implemented in government departments. In the case of VIPs the dues have mounted to between Rs 5 lakhs to 1 crore. Industry establishments are fast becoming major defaulters, unlike earlier cases.