Electricity Billing and Payment, stuck in the past!

Electricity Billing and Payment, stuck in the past!

By
Debkumar Bhadra

According to local media reports, Electricity Department, A&N Administration is contemplating raising electricity bills by direct meter reading or provisional bill in the islands ostensibly to ramp up the cumbersome process, which as of now is labour intensive and require repeated visits to customer premise, first for taking meter reading and then for distribution of printed bills. With the instant initiative, it seems the department aims to finish meter reading, billing and distribution all in one go. It is a welcome step, but addresses the actual billing-payment issue only partially. Let me explain.

According to data accessed from Basic Statistics, A&N Islands have 1,33,990 consumers during the year 2018-19 of which 91,270 is in South Andaman, 32,660 in N&M Andaman and 10,060 in the Nicobar District.

Every month personnel from the electricity department visit each of these individual connection points, note down the meter reading, return to the site office, calculate unit consumed, post the data manually in the ledger and then update the data through the billing software. Thereafter bills are printed, sorted and distributed manually to the consumers. This is the first part which basically leads to bill generation.

The second and concluding part is important, specifically in post covid scenario. In this step, each one of those One Lakh, Thirty Three Thousand, Nine Hundred and Ninety bills move from individual household to one or the other payment counter. Meaning, customer present the bill along with cash at the counter, clerk keys in the consumer number into a PC (personal computer), verifies the bill details, tallies the currency notes and on satisfaction that everything is correct, accepts payment and issues a receipt thereof. Subsequently the hard currencies so collected are deposited into government account as revenue receipt. Thus the cycle which started from meter reading comes to a halt with currency changing hands, only to be repeated the following month, every month, month after month.

By rolling out direct meter reading, one can see, an attempt has been made at freeing the system stuck in the past. No doubt things will be a bit easier since meter reading and the labour intensive activity of bill distribution will be clubbed and completed in a single shot. However, as far as customers are concerned, it is not going to make their life any different, until payment mechanism is incorporated in the scheme of things.

Electricity site offices in South Andaman district are already connected to the central server at the state data centre through leased circuits. Making use of this infrastructure, site offices (in South Andaman district) through WBBS (Web Based Billing System) upload monthly billing data directly into the central server. Subsequently the data is accessed at electricity site offices as well as Common Service Centres (CSC) to accept bill payment. Thus as far as online billing-payment is concerned, it can be said, necessary IT infrastructure is already in place, albeit in a limited scale.

The Government of India with the vision to transform India into a digitally empowered society and knowledge economy, launched its flagship Digital India programme which profess “Faceless, Paperless, Cashless” as one of the role. Time is ripe for the Electricity Department to adopt online digital payment system so that delivery of service to the citizens is in tune with government’s digital push. Various modes of digital payment are already available across platforms. There is also Bharat Kosh which could come handy.

Benefits of going online are immense. Besides making the billing-payment system fast, efficient and transparent, crowding at site office payment counters or CSC’s would be drastically cut short. In the post covid situation neither the government would want to see a crowd, for whatever compelling reasons, nor would any consumer like to be part of long serpentine queue in front of payment counters.

Also, there are consumers who do not currently live in their home, may be due to job requirement, inter-island posting or on a vacation. With online payment system in place, such consumers, despite being away from the city, will be able to remain up-to-date with bill payments. Not to mention, government’s revenue collection will improve substantially.

Online payment system will also help the electricity department in more than one ways. With immediate effect, costly printing and labour intensive distribution of monthly bills could be completely done away with. Thus there will be accrued saving on precious resource such as paper, printing ink, time, energy, manpower etc. Particularly the LMMR’s (Line Man cum Meter Reader), Counter/Bill Clerk’s who reportedly are over worked and struggling to maintain tight time schedules will have a sigh of relief.

Furthermore in situations akin to the present one where physical movement is not advised, an online system could function with very limited resources. Take for example I could not pay electricity bills for the month of March due to lockdown. Now if the department raises another bill, and if I cannot go out, it is obvious this bill will also remain unpaid. Thus the very purpose of issuing the bill will get defeated.

More over if payment counters remain closed, not only government’s revenue collection takes a beating, energy consumers who have been out of job for months together due to lockdown will also find it extremely difficult to pay more than one bills accumulating due to non payment. Keeping in view the current situation, one can very well envision, things are not going to turn normal in the near future. Even if lockdown is lifted, restrictions on social/physical distancing norms are going to remain for some time. Thus it is in the interest of everyone that electricity billing-payment system shift to online mode.

One can understand rolling out an online payment gateway and its integration is not something that can be done overnight. Also that revenue collection cannot be deferred for long. Therefore to start with, the personnel likely to be deployed for direct meter reading/provisional billing could be authorised to accept "on the spot" payment so that citizens need not risk venturing out and revenue collection is also ramped up. Let it be a win-win situation at both the ends.

A problem that is likely to crop up is difficulty in issuing payment receipt on the go. If cheque payment is accepted, the need to issue instant payment receipt could be eliminated. There will not be any anxiety in customers mind since whenever the cheque is encased, drawee details will reflect in bank statement. Thus in the present circumstance, meter reading, billing and payment all could be completed in a single shot.

Hopefully, when the lockdown conditions ease, the concerned authorities would accord, migration of electricity billing-payment system to online modes, a thought it deserves.


Update :

The Electricity Department has finally launched portal for online bill payment called Urja Pay during September 2020; bringing an end to the cumbersome process of getting the bills and then queuing up for payment at the counters. Kudos to Electricity Department, A&N Administration and SOVTECH for the clean and clutter free web interface.

Login to Urja Pay and skip the queue :
https://urjapay.andaman.gov.in

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