Anisul Islam Noor :
Consumers are bringing allegations of receiving ghost electricity bills from the power distribution companies for the month of April. The bills they have received are more than twice the bills they paid for March and the preceding months.
Sheikh Abdulla of Kazipara in city’s Mirpur, said, he paid Tk 2343 as electricity bill for March but the bill he received for April is Tk. 6420 although there was no difference in consumption.
Maleka Begum, a resident of College Para of city’s Kamrangirchar, said, she received electricity bill Tk 6965 for April as against Tk 3438 for March. She consumed 623 units in March but the consumption for April went up to 992 units, which she described as digital theft. She does not use any AC.
Muhibur Rahman of city’s Gulshan residential area said that he received a bill of Tk 8450 for April, which is almost twice of the previous month. He said that there has been no mentionable difference in consumption of electricity.
Dhaka Power Distribution Company Ltd (DPDC) and Dhaka Electric Supply Company Ltd (DESCO) sources said that they have
received complaints from many consumers about inflated electricity bills. The companies are receiving complaints daily about the unusual rise of electricity bills for April from the consumers, sources said adding that they were looking into the matter.
The electricity distribution companies have appointed contractors to prepare provisional bills, but sometimes the contractors submit ghost bills to the distribution companies. An internal investigation of the companies found the allegation of ghost bills as true , some official sources requesting anonymity said.
It is a case of meter reading manipulation by some dishonest people. The meter readers give illegal connections to many unauthorized establishments and road side shops and factories in exchange for money, which are, later, adjusted against ghost bills of legal consumers, said Shahjan Ali Mollah, a retired engineer of Power Development Board (PDB).
The submission of bills without spot visit was described as another reason behind such inflated ghost bills, he said. Many consumers, he said, are at times compelled to pay inflated (ghost) electricity bills under duress.
A consumer of Mirpur area said that he has received electricity bills for Tk 6000 for the month of April, which never exceeded Tk2500 in the preceding months. “We are not getting any convincing explanation from DPDC in this regard,” he said.
Muhiuddin Mahmud, a retired official of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs who has been living in city’s Gulshan-2 said that during the month of April he was out of the country for about weeks and his flat was under lock and key. To his great surprise he received electricity bill of Tk11000 for April. He said that he has submitted a complaint to DESCO to look into the matter.
The concerned officials of power distribution companies said that they try to attend to the complaints of the consumers but in reality the complaints of only a few are addressed, said some consumers.
Power generation and distribution process are both complex and riddled with corruption and mismanagement. In an age of computer billings, the ‘system-loss’ aspect is not supposed to dominate any sphere of the consumption process, Fazlur Rahman, a technical expert in the field said. He said the concerned authorities should look into the matter so that consumers are not subjected to unnecessary harassment through inflated bills.
To check the problems of inflated bills, the Bangladesh Energy Regulatory Commission (BERC) is planning to introduce nine slabs, an official source said.
