In what appears a whitewashing exercise for the power distribution companies’ daylight robbery, the Power Information Technology Company (PITC) has come up with an initial response, to Nepra’s inquiry report regarding the matter of excessive billing by power distribution companies (discos). The Ministry of Energy had constituted a four-member committee to review the basis, methodology and findings of Nepra’s inquiry report and submit recommendations.
Some background helps. Recall that Nepra on December 4, 2023, had made public the inquiry report on alleged excessive billing by discos in July and August 2023.From excessive billing to billing beyond the monthly cycle, from defective meters to massive fraud in detection bills, and from blatant violation of meter reading manuals – the chargesheet was long.
The most shocking element of the inquiry report was that a staggering 10.6 million consumers were charged bills for reading period of more than 30 days. That is literally more than a third of all domestic consumers who were one way or the other subject to excessive billing – that too at a time when inflation was near its peak, and power tariffs had just been jacked up considerably.
The regulator had minced no words in saying how the discos are deliberately using such tactics to overcharge consumers for one reason or the other. This is far more serious an allegation than a finding that points out technical negligence or corporate incompetence.
The report also highlighted how the extension of the billing cycle beyond the permitted 30-day period led to a large number of consumers falling from protected to unprotected categories orbeing charged higher slab.Mind you, the change from protected to non-protected is a significant event, because it takes consecutive 12 months to qualify for the protected category. You miss the mark once, and you won’t be considered protected, till 12 consecutive months of qualified consumption. The impact in these cases runs much beyond – and nearly a million domestic consumers met their fate in July and August.
Now comes the initial response. The PICT committee has rejected all but one finding of Nepra’s inquiry report, suggesting it bears serious flaws pertaining to data accuracy, methodologies employed and inconsistencies with applicable processes and ground realities. The PICT initial response claims that NEPRA used erroneous datasets for tabulation of excessive billing statistics.
Be that as it may, the PICT report clearly implies that all discos are operating in clear violation of the Terms and Conditions of Tariff for discos. What is being presented as existing billing design and ground reality by the PICT is instead a gross violation of Nepra tariff rules. The rules define a “billing period” as “30 days or less from the last reading”, and Nepra is well within its rights to assume the same while inquiring excessive billing.
The PICT response, on the other hand, first states the very obvious that July and August are months with 31 days, and then goes on to mention how discos do not take meter readings on weekends and gazette holidays, and that the meter reading is then taken on the next working day in such a case. This is nothing short of admission of crime as the rules clearly state a period of 30 days or less, which surely suggests that discos are allowed to capture readings in less than 30 days but can in no circumstances go beyond 30 days.
It is important because millions can enter an entirely new slab in case of delayed readings, which is of more critical importance today than ever before, because the previous slab benefit that existed till last year, is no more. This simply means that if even a day’s delay leads to a change of slab, the actual impact on consumers’ bill is significantly higher than under previous tariff regimes. One waits to see how the regulator responds to the PICT claims, that also accuses it of biased sampling of bills among other discrepancies. It is high time the regulator ensures enforcement of standard terms and conditions, which are openly being violated.