Water Board develops software for tracking bills

February 07, 2012 09:42 am | Updated 09:42 am IST - HYDERABAD:

Tracking work sanction, material supply, completion of work and payment of bills will be easier now at the Water Board.

The Bill Monitoring System (BMS) introduced on Monday reduces manual work while offering better tracking and transparency in processing bills.

The BMS also captures bill information, generates reference token and real time status of bills at each hierarchy. Besides the concerned agency gets SMS alerts on the updated bill status.

Board's managing director, Adhar Sinha, told presspersons here on Monday that the software package was developed in association with the Centre for Good Governance.

It was also proposed to develop a module for HMWSSB vendor registration wherein they can register their name, mobile number, bank details for generation of a unique agency code.

In future payments through cheques would be discouraged and payments would be only through Electronic Clearing System, Mr. Sinha said.

He said the Board had decided to send the meter reader name and mobile number to the consumers through SMS along with bill alert for redressal of grievances, if any.

So far only 4.5 lakh out of 7.85 lakh consumers had registered their mobile numbers.

To a question, Mr. Sinha said the revenue position of the Board was looking up with the hike in tariff. This month it was able to pay dues of Rs. 20 crore to the CPDCL.

A small percentage of consumers had not paid last month's bill because of the confusion on the categorisation in the tariff. It will take a month's time to rectify the problems. Small shops would not be levied commercial tariff, Mr. Sinha clarified.

He said under the100 days action plan 561 works costing Rs. 37 crore were identified.

They were almost complete. In the second round 1105 works worth Rs. 50 crores were taken up.

They were under progress and would be completed within the March 31 deadline.

0 / 0
Sign in to unlock member-only benefits!
  • Access 10 free stories every month
  • Save stories to read later
  • Access to comment on every story
  • Sign-up/manage your newsletter subscriptions with a single click
  • Get notified by email for early access to discounts & offers on our products
Sign in

Comments

Comments have to be in English, and in full sentences. They cannot be abusive or personal. Please abide by our community guidelines for posting your comments.

We have migrated to a new commenting platform. If you are already a registered user of The Hindu and logged in, you may continue to engage with our articles. If you do not have an account please register and login to post comments. Users can access their older comments by logging into their accounts on Vuukle.