PCL bid to mop up revenue: Multiple points for bill payment in villages

LUCKNOW: In a desperate bid to jack up its revenue, the UP Power Corporation Ltd (UPPCL) is roping in various agencies to create multiple points in every village so that rural consumers pay their electricity bills regularly every month.

Right from public distribution shops to women self-help groups and cooperative banks, the UPPCL has decided to try them all to increase the turn-up of consumers to pay their bills giving them no excuse of lack of bill collection facilities.

“Despite all the efforts the majority of rural consumers are still not paying their monthly electricity bills and one of the possible reasons for this is also that they do not have easy options for paying their dues,” UPPCL chairman and principal secretary, energy, Arvind Kumar said.

“This is why we have decided to provide multiple bill collection points at village-level itself and for this we are tying up with different agencies,” he added.

The corporation has offered Rs 20 per bill transaction to any such agency provided they will not be allowed to transact any electricity bill that has dues worth more than Rs 50,000.

The UPPCL is already in an agreement with 90,000 common service centres (CSCs) working in rural areas but only 30,000 of them are active and the UPPCL is trying to make all of them proactive by holdings departmental camps for them and impressing upon them the benefits of the business model.

Now, the corporation is also entering into agreements with the rural public distribution shops, agriculture cooperative societies and women self-help groups for the same purpose.

“These are the agencies that have maximum interaction with villagers and we are sure they will be able to motivate consumers to pay their bills through them,” Kumar said.

“In fact, we are ready to engage anyone who is ready to create a payment wallet and work for us and earn handsome amount by depositing consumers, bills,” he added.

Kumar said efforts were also being made to ensure that all rural consumers received their bills regularly by addressing to the issues of billing agencies and their hand-held billing agents.

“We are ensuring the billing agencies and their agents get their commission/payment regularly on time,” he stressed.

The Uttar Pradesh Power Corporation Ltd has also decided to install meters on all the premises that currently have excess to unmetered power through a drive by March end.

“Of the total 2.88 crore consumers at present, 2.51 crore already are metered and we have decided to install meters at the remaining 37 lakh consumers as well by March end,” Kumar said.

Majority of unmetered connections were in rural areas, he added.