Five lakh customers got inflated power bills

The distribution companies have mistakenly inflated bills for about 5 lakh customers while preparing an average monthly charge as officials could not go from door to door amid the coronavirus pandemic, said state minister for power Nasrul Hamid yesterday.

"The current problem is down to the mistake of the distribution companies. While preparing the average bill, they inflated bills in some cases," said the state minister.

He made the comments during a virtual discussion organised by the Centre for Policy Dialogue on the power sector.

Many customers have complained that they received monthly electricity bills that are much higher than in the previous months.

"I have said a number of times a mistake is taking place. There is nothing wrong in admitting the mistake. Our distributors are working to correct the mistakes. So, we are acting on it," Nasrul said.

There are 3.68 crore electricity consumers in Bangladesh. Of them, 30 lakh customers use smart meters. The rest use manual, Nasrul said.

"Meter readers have to read those manually. It would take 20 lakh people to read the meters at 4 crore households. If these people were sent to every household, at least 5 lakh people would have contacted the coronavirus," he said.

So, they were told to find a solution so that nobody faced any trouble, he said.

Some four lakh to five lakh customers in both rural and urban areas have faced inflated bills, according to the state minister.

"The customers should not worry about it. The issue is being solved if they go to their local electricity offices."

"There are meters. The bills would be corrected by looking at previous months bills," he said.

The government is also not taking any surcharge for three months at household levels to give some comfort to customers, according to the state minister.

As people are staying home because of the coronavirus-induced shutdown, they are also consuming more electricity compared to previous months, he said.