The teething trouble of water board’s new billing process has delayed issuance of water bills this month. As per the old process, water bills were issued in the first week of every month.
Starting this year, the Hyderabad Metropolitan Water Supply and Sewerage Board (HMWS&SB) divided the number of dockets or water meter clusters to reduce the burden on billing officials. Till December 2017, there were 613 dockets, each containing 2,000 to 3,000 meters, while this year there were 1,167 dockets - each containing 750 to 1,000 meters.
The board called for tenders and outsourced the water billing work to 11 new agencies. The agencies facilitate billing in 16 divisions. Each agency employed by the board was assigned not more than two divisions for billing.
The delay in billing occurred because the new agencies are still training their technicians to handle the billing work.
A senior official at the water board said bills are likely to be issued by January 22. Water Board managing director Dana Kishore ordered a revision of the billing process as customer complaints about careless billing piled up at the board. Most customers complained of billing officers taking wrong reading and issuing inflated bills.
In some areas, billing technicians were accused of issuing bills without reading the meter. There were also complaints of delayed billing.
Consumer complaints
“As customers complained repeatedly, the MD decided to go for an overhaul. When asked, billing officers complained of work overload which prevented them from issuing accurate bills to most people in certain localities. The board is making one person bill upto 3,000 connections in a month,” said Vijayakumar Reddy, director (Revenue) of (HMWS&SB).
With the reduction in the number of connections in each docket, billing could be made easier, he added.
Starting February, all water bills will have to be issued by the 15th of the month.
“We do not want to extend the billing process to the third week of every month. Within the first 15 days all meter reading will have to be done and the next two weeks of the month will be set aside for payment processing,” Mr. Reddy said.
As water billing agencies were given either one or two divisions to handle, water board officials expect them to process the bills sooner than the previous year.
“We assigned two divisions only to some agencies who asked for it because outsourcing the whole process to a single agency had caused corruption and inefficiency,” Mr. Reddy added.
This month customers will be expected to pay the bills by January 31.
