Chennai: Struggling to plug the gap caused by a shortage of meter assessors, TNPDCL is shifting part of the billing responsibility to consumers, asking them to photograph their electricity meters and upload the bi-monthly readings through a mobile app to generate bills themselves.TNPDCL is set to launch a new feature on its official mobile phone application through which consumers can capture the exact meter reading, after which the billing software will automatically calculate the power consumption for two months and generate an invoice. The invoice will be sent via WhatsApp and SMS to the mobile number linked to the particular service.Amid complaints of billing discrepancies, including delayed meter readings, inflated invoices and wrong assessments of electricity consumption, and to tide over the shortage of assessors, TNPDCL has decided to engage consumers to record their electricity consumption on their phones and automatically generate invoices on time.The application is currently used by consumers to pay electricity bills, apply for new service connections and raise complaints about electricity supply-related shortcomings.“TNPDCL has developed a new feature through which a consumer can open the smartphone camera and capture the exact meter reading. A consumer should enter the service number in the app and capture the reading for the system to generate the invoice. It is pretty much what the assessors do. They enter the reading manually, but consumers should take a photo and upload it to eliminate the possibility of wrong assessment,” said a TNPDCL official.Testing of the feature is currently underway, and it will be rolled out in a few areas in the next two weeks before being extended across the state before December, added the official. Consumers can upload the reading up to two days at the end of the bi-monthly cycle to ensure that the consumption does not jump to the next tariff slab. One consumer can also take readings of multiple meters by entering the correct service number, and invoices will be sent to the concerned consumers.It may be noted that Torrent Gas, which supplies piped LPG to a few neighbourhoods in the city, resorts to similar meter readings to bill consumers. “Once a consumer completes reading a meter, it will be taken off the list of meters to be assessed by the assessors. It will ease the burden on assessors too,” added an official.S Neelakandan, a retired TNEB officer and consumer activist, said it is a wrong move by the discom and will cause revenue loss. “It is acceptable as a temporary measure to select consumer categories. But we are talking about 2.5 crore consumers. TNPDCL cannot dump its responsibility on consumers, because consumption charges are inclusive of meter assessment. Recruiting sufficient manpower is the only option even if the existing digital meters are replaced by smart meters. Smart meter programme will take years to cover the entire State and the recruited manpower can be very well utilised for other responsibilities,” he said.While launching the facility, TNPDCL will issue detailed instructions on how to generate electricity bills and plans to display the step-by-step process at all billing counters.
