BENGALURU: The Bangalore Electricity Supply Company (Bescom) is flooded with complaints from consumers who are not able to pay their bills online. Reason, the Bescom online payment app has not been working for the past eight days, putting thousands of consumers, both domestic and commercial, into hardship.
Power consumers - S R Kandige, P Diwakar and Chander Iyer - all based out of Bengaluru told The New Indian Express that for the past 10 to 15 years they have been paying their power bills online regularly without any hitch, but this time when they log in to pay the bills, the bill amount does not get displayed on the screen. Kandige said, “It just shows ‘0’ amount”.
Bescom General Manager (CR) Nagaraj S R said, “We will look into the matter and sort it out in one or two days.’’ Bescom GM (IT) Venkatesh and team who have been reportedly working on it for about a week refused to speak to the media.
Glitches will be sorted out soon: Sunil Kumar
Power Minister Sunil Kumar who is on a tour to Karkala, said it was a technical problem and would be sorted out within a day or two. But the consumers are not satisfied with the assurances. Some complained that when they initially contacted the power authorities about seven days ago, they were assured that the issue would be rectified soon. Their common complaint was that power authorities had agreed to set it right soon but it has still not happened. Some consumers are worried whether their power lines will be disconnected for non-payment of bills, forcing them to run around for a re-connection. Some hope the power ministry would extend the deadline for payment of bills.
Bescom sources said, earlier a major IT company was handling the online payment system but now it has been handed over to another company. “The software has been changed and these glitches are initial hiccups which will be sorted out soon,” a source said.