ET Report
Jammu, Aug 27 : Late distribution of electricity bills by Power Development Department (PDD), creating problems for the customers to pay their bills on time, people have to stand in long queue due to limited counters.
The PDD has outsourced its billing services with Jammu and Kashmir Bank, which helps the department for receipt of electricity bills. The meter reader of PDD distributes the Bills to the customer and customer has to pay it at the prescribed branch of Jammu and Kashmir Bank.
The customers of the New Plot to Roop Nagar have to pay their bills at Janipur branch of J K Bank, but whenever they visit the bank, they find the hall of the bank filled with three long queues. In the busy lifestyle, many of them do not get time to pay the bill, standing in the long queues.
"I have not paid my electricity bill for the last three month, as whenever I visited this counter to pay the bill, I gave up due to the long queues," said Ankush Khajuria, a resident of Roop Nagar."No one has time to stand in queues for hours, the department should make some alternate options for bill payment," he added.
The Branch Manager of the Bank said, "We have made three separate counters exclusively for electricity bills, but due to heavy rush in the last days, people have to stand in the queues."More than 7000 customers have to pay bill in this branch before 27th of every month and the department starts circulating the bills from 20th of every month, though their system generate the bills by 12th of every month. So, the bank has to collect 7000 bills from the customers within seven days, which creates long queues in the branch. Gurbachan Singh, Superintending Engineer (SE) PDD said, "We are planning to distribute the customers to other branches for their convenience. I will check why the distribution of bills is being delayed.' |
