Thiruvananthapuram: The Kerala State Electricity Board (KSEB) has received about one lakh complaints over bills issued for the lockdown period.
Customers, shocked by bills that are much higher than what they have been usually paying, have been calling up the toll-free number and visiting the KSEB section offices to lodge their complaints. The KSEB chairman N S Pillai also gets many complaints on his WhatApp number.
An emergency meeting of the KSEB will soon be convened to take a decision on changing the billing system.
The board has decided to give bills in Malayalam besides in English. This will be implemented in three months.
The chairman told Manorama that the technical terms mentioned in the bills will be simplified to make it easy for the common man to understand them.
The current spot billing system provides details such as the consumer number, the electricity post number, transformer and meter details, the amount of electricity used, tariff, the bill date, the date when electricity connection is disconnected, and the last date for paying the bill without fine.
Customers have, however, complained that the bills are not clear enough, and they find it difficult to understand the bill on reading it.
Earlier, the KSEB had said that the increase in electricity bills is due to the reading adjustment as meter reading could not be conducted in April due to the COVID-19 lockdown. It said the current bills were generated by looking at the users’ consumption trend of the previous two months. Once the next meter reading is done in two months, the actual consumption will be known and necessary adjustments would be made in the bills that will be generated, the board said.
It had said that customers can get their complaints resolved by approaching the senior superintendents at section offices. In case of unsatisfactory response, they can escalate the matter to assistant engineer, assistant executive engineer, executive engineer, and the deputy chief engineer.
Immediate action on 4,000 complaints over slabs
The KSEB will take immediate action on complaints from about 4,000 people stating that they have been billed in slabs that are not applicable to them.
Officials have been told to look into such complaints and redress them. At the same time, there are no merits in some complaints, the chairman said.
Petition for monthly bills: Court notice to KSEB
Meanwhile, the Kerala High Court has sought the KSEB’s response to a public interest litigation demanding the reinstatement of the monthly billing system. The petition will be taken up for hearing again on Wednesday.
Social activist M C Vijaykumar has filed the petition alleging the two-month billing cycle is illegal.
In the two-month bills, the one-month consumption is calculated by taking the average of the electricity used till the reading date.
This amount comes out to be higher than what a consumer would have had to pay under the one-month billing cycle, the petition said.
This time, the bill was high since it was given 76 days after the previous bill, the petition pointed out.
The petition also claims that the KSEB formula for calculating the electricity rate is not recognised by the Kerala Electricity Regulatory Commission (KERC).
