New system in municipal areas from June 1

By Our Special Correspondent

KOCHI, MARCH 24. The Kerala State Electricity Board will extend spot billing system to all municipal areas in the State from June 1, according to the Electricity Minister, Mr. S. Sarma.

Addressing a press conference here today, he said that with this, about half the electricity consumers in the State would be covered by the spot billing system, which is already in vogue in 73 KSEB section office areas. About 19 lakh consumers under 142 sections will benefit by the extension. Extension of the system to the entire State will be considered after a year-end review, he said.

The Board decided to bring the municipal areas under the system as it has been found to be ``complaint free'' and very useful to the consumers. Under the system, the billing is linked to the exact electricity consumed. The billing will be made once every two months.

Under the new system, consumers will not be slapped with additional bills or ``adjustment invoices''. Moreover, they will be able to regulate their consumption according to their paying capacity, and any fault in meters would not go undetected.

Explaining the switch-over mode, the Minister said consumers whose ``cut-off'' meter readings are taken by the spot billers in April will have to pay the charges for April also under the provisional invoice card. They will receive their first spot bill in June. Consumers whose meter readings are taken in May will have to pay the charges for April and May as per the provisional invoice card. They will receive their first spot bill in July.

Spot billing was first introduced in the State in 26 electrical major sections on an experimental basis in 1990. It was extended to 47 sections in the three Corporation areas in 1997. A policy decision was taken in 1998 to extend the system to other parts of the State.

Electricity control rooms that function round-the-clock would be set up in six more districts - Kollam, Pathanamthitta, Kottayam, Alappuzha, Palakkad and Kannur. They will start functioning from April 1. At present, such control rooms are functioning only in Thiruvananthapuram, Ernakulam and Kozhikode. The plan is to have such control rooms functioning in all the districts by the year- end.

Despite the ``misunderstanding'' on consumer card, about 90 per cent of the consumers had submitted the applications much ahead of the deadline. The card would benefit the consumer in several ways, for instance, it would obviate payment for electricity not consumed when a meter was changed. It would also enable those who buy or rent houses to have up-to-date information about payment details, arrears etc.

The problem relating to the payment for the power generated by the NTPC's Kayamkulam power station had more or less been sorted out, he said.

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