The government's power division has grabbed performance bonuses while the clients incurred huge losses.
The metre readers could not survey households to introduce bills during February and March due to coronavirus. Power division had decided that the bills would be assessed averaging the bills of preceding months. Prothom Alo published a report on 10 August that said though the inflated bills were introduced as per the order of the top officers, the employees were being punished for this. State Minister for Power, Energy and Mineral Resources Nasrul Hamid, following the report, admitted that the bills were inflated and promised to take action against responsible ones.
In the report, it was said, DPDC (Dhaka Power Distribution Company) had sent letters to its 36 offices asking to introduce inflated bills. Following the order, bills were inflated from 10 to 61 per cent at different areas.
Not only for coronavirus, the power distributing companies always inflate bills to show income higher at the end of a fiscal. This time, the inflation has been multiplied which enraged the clients. Many clients complained over the ghost bills when many remained silent expecting no solution. The ghost bills this year are much higher than usual, but who will detain the culprits?
The power division or the distribution company does not have the authority to fix the electricity price. Bangladesh Energy Regulatory Commission (BERC) fixes the price holding public hearing. The commission raises the price of electricity time to time in the name of public hearing, but cannot play any role to stop the corruption of the officials and employees of power division. This is unfortunate.
BERC had sent letters to DPDC and other distributing companies asking about the punitive action taken against the ones introducing the inflated bills. Till 11 August, neither the chairman nor MD of DPDC answered the letter. According to the BERC law, not responding to allegations accounts to three-year jail sentence or fine or both. DPDC chairman Bikash Dewan Chakma denied that he ordered to inflate bills. Then it should be probed who had sent the letter from the ICT department of DPDC.
The state minister promised action against the culprits. Each of the concerned must be held accountable. For months, the issue of ghost bills is being discussed, but no action has been taken. There have been massive corruption and misuse regarding not only bills, but also power transmission and distribution. This cannot be allowed.
The culprits behind the irregularities and corruption in power division must be punished. Not only the employees who followed orders, those issuing the orders, must be punished too. The ghost bills must be revoked and clients should be provided with fresh ones. The distributing companies are responsible to adjust the already extorted extra charges with the client’s next bill. This is to see, what action are taken against the responsible ones after the minister’s promise.