Late spot billing a bane for consumers

Nellore: Electric bills through metre reading has turned out to be bane for rural and semi-urban population where they were paying huge
power bills due to inordinate delay in collecting data of consumption. They have been practically bearing brunt of non-telescopic
calculation of tariff system where a single unit after a rounded-number changes the entire tariff amount that becomes a burden for
consumers.

In fact, there are 17 EROs in the district and the Discom has allocated contractors for each centre for collecting data of consumption
using spot billing machines. The agencies will be paid some commission for each metre/household for collecting data of reading. This is,
according to sources, somewhat on time in the district headquarters and also in some division headquarters.

But, the contract agencies have again outsourced the activity to subcontractors in rural areas which has been creating troubles to the
consumers. There were complaints that city population was also facing the problem with late spot billing process.