By Abha Anindita
“I run a small shop in Laitumkhrah, and I only use my heater to heat up the food but there are some months when my bill runs up to Rs 4000 a month, I hardly make enough to pay the rent and sustain a livelihood, how am I supposed to pay such a huge amount?,” Kong Batimai asks.
The old electric meter that hangs in front of her shop is testimony that the electricity she draws is accounted for. However, how many units would a single CFL bulb and a small heater consume?
The 10th Integrated Rating exercise that covered 71 power distribution utilities with 46 state discoms, 14 private discoms and 11 power departments covering all states and Union territories rated the MePDCL( Meghalaya Power Distribution Corporation) with a ‘D’ grading. It was placed in the 52nd position.
The same report pegged the billing efficiency at 68.7 percent for the two financial years, 2019-20 and 2020-21.
Even with the state resorting to load-shedding for almost 7-8 hours in the city and about 10-12 hours in the rural areas, the bill still remains high, and this is a common allegation of consumers all around the state.
To solve the problem of billing inefficiency, the MeECL 2021 introduced the Smart Meter Project. It was sponsored by the Asian Development Bank. The smart meters were aimed at solving problems of under-billing, over-billing, and non-billing.
Consumers would be able to see exactly how much and when they are using the energy, which will enable them to track and reduce power consumption as required.
However, the billing inefficiency of the corporation does not only overcharge consumers, but sometimes users who consume electricity do not receive their bills. There are consumers who do not receive their bills for months altogether, and some of them include high value and commercial consumers. This might be an advantage for some consumers, but in the bigger picture, genuine customers suffer and so does the corporation.
Sanjay Goyal, Chairman-cum-Managing Director of MeECL during a conversation with The Meghalayan agreed that it has to do with the inefficiency of the corporation if they are not able to cut off the lines of the consumers who do not pay their electricity bills on time.
Goyal said, “As an organisation, enforcement wise we are not that particular in the sense that if you are using my energy and not paying me and I am not able to disconnect the line or penalise you, then you don’t have any incentive or disincentive to switch off the bulb, because you know, nobody is going to disconnect me or bill me, so you do not realise its importance, that is the human psyche, and you end up wasting the energy.”
The smart meter project, however, got lost in the controversy. According to the Ujwal Discom Assurance Yojana (UDAY)’s website, only 3 percent of users, who consume 200 and up to 500 kWH, have smart meters installed.
Professor Sumarbin Umdor, Head of Department, Economics, NEHU suggests that a way out of this misery would be bringing all the stakeholders on the same page.
He added, “When you bring in something new, I think the process of consultation should be more rigorous. And the process needs to be more open and the general public needs to be aware of what’s happening. They need to be told this is not unique to Meghalaya but has been tried elsewhere, otherwise, people tend to look at this very suspiciously, even if these are genuine measures.”