UNB, Dhaka :Titas Gas customers are going to get a facility to pay their bills online, as the country’s largest gas distribution company is set to sign a contract with an IT consortium to introduce modern total integrated open architectural (TIOA) system.”We’re hopeful, soon after installation of the system, all the 1.8 million consumers from households to largest power companies will benefit from it as they will be able to pay their bills online, without going to bank,” Md. Nowshad Islam, managing director of Titas Gas Transmission & Distribution Company Ltd, told UNB on Sunday.He noted that the new system will take a total of about 10 months to be installed, which will ultimately provide real time payment facilities both for consumers and the Titas authorities.At present, Titas Gas has a very old computerized data system named “Proprietary Base Close System” which was installed more than 20 years ago with old software from the 80s.Titas Gas officials said that old software and hardware does not support the latest online system. Only the large and a few commercial consumers are connected with its data system. But the Titas Gas’s largest consumers are mainly from households who are over 90 percent and are not integrated with the existing system.As a result, both the Titas Gas authority and its household consumers have been having a tremendous problem with their bill payments.Under the existing system, they pay bills through bank and in many cases, the bill payment data do not reach the Titas ledger book properly which ultimately creates discrepancy in updating consumers’ bill payment data.”But, under the new computerized data system, all the data will instantly online reach the Titas ledger book for which both the consumer and management can easily get their updated bill payment data and other necessary information through using internet,” said the Titas chief.The consumers can pay their bills through mobile operators’ Point of Sale (POS) system, bank booth, credit and debit cards and also from mobile banking account like Bkas, Mcash and other instruments.The Titas MD also said that another major benefit will be that any consumer of Titas can apply online for new gas connection and stay updated with his application’s progress. “Consumers can easily track its application and relevant file,” he added.Nowshad Islam informed that another advantage of the new computerized data system is that it will retrieve all the consumers’ existing data for the new network without any loss of memory.”It was a big challenge for us that we wanted to preserve the old data, but no companies were found to provide such facilities. But finally, we found a company ensuring that old data will not be affected,” he said.Official sources said the Titas Gas company picked up a consortium for the job through tender process. A consortium of “Devine IT Business Land Ltd and Right Brain Solution Ltd” will execute the job at a cost of about Tk 10 crore.
