The Hindu : Tamil Nadu / Chennai News : Despite computerisation, wait at Electricity Board counters continues

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Wednesday, Jun 13, 2007
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Tamil Nadu

Tamil Nadu - Chennai

Despite computerisation, wait at Electricity Board counters continues

R. Srikanth

Most of the consumers are still unaware of option to pay anywhere in zone

LONG-DRAWN: Electricity bill payment continues to be time-consuming despite computerisation of the counters. A scene in Adambakkam on Tuesday. — Photo: R. Shivaji Rao

CHENNAI : Consumers of the Tamil Nadu Electricity Board (TNEB) in several parts of the city continue to find the bill payment an arduous process even after computerisation of the collection centres. It is not uncommon to find consumers, including many senior citizens, waiting in long queues, particularly closer to the pay by date (between the 11th and 15th of the month).

A resident of Moovarasampet, K. Ramachandran, complained that given the queues he found little difference, in terms of wait, between manual and computerised bill collection centres.

Apart from making the bill payment an easy and simple task, the objective of the computerisation was to facilitate payment at any of the collection centres in their zone.

In the first phase of the computerisation process, TNEB bifurcated the city into two zones — north and south — allowing residents of the respective zone to make payment at any of the collection centres falling within the zone. This means a resident of Tambaram could pay the bill at Vadapalani or Adyar. Likewise, a resident of Park Town can pay the bill at Purasawalkam or at Triplicane.

The TNEB has also opened counters at the main office at Anna Salai where residents irrespective of their locality can pay their bills. The move seems to have met with only limited success, as the consumers continue to patronise the collection centres where they were paying the bills before computerisation. One of the reasons for this is the lack of awareness about the option to pay at any of the centres.

Effectively, this means the wait time has not really been reduced. Senior citizens in many households, who usually pay the electricity bills, are forced to wait in long queues at the collection centres. According to a TNEB official, the Board plans to integrate the northern and southern circles, to allow people make payment at any of the collection centres in the city.

But no time frame has been set for the move, which is expected to further simplify the payment process, he added.

Previously, the payment process was such that an identification number was allotted for a particular street of an area. The identification number would be marked on the payment card of the individual consumer and also at the collection counter.

A consumer could pay the bills only at the assigned counter and this resulted in consumers having to wait in long queues braving hot climate to pay the bills.

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