Jamshedpur : Mango residents staged a protest at the JUVNL’s sub-divisional office in Sankosai claiming that the they got inflated power bills by the private agency involved in meter-reading and billing service from this month.
The protest began at the JUVNL’s sub-divisional office that continued till 2 pm, during which over 100 consumers were shouted slogans against the Quess Corp for allegedly producing `inflated’ bills.
Later on the advice of sub-divisional officer (electrical), Mango, Naveen Kumar Singh, the aggrieved consumers handed him a memorandum.
The private agency, Quess Corporation Ltd, which has started the meter-reading and spot billing system from Mayis facing protest.
SDO, JUVNL, Naveen Kumar Singh said as the protest over inflated billing has nothing to do directly with the JUVNL sub-divisional office . They passed on those complaints to his immediate superior executive engineer, Shidharth Sharma.
” We are looking into the matter as we have received over 100 complaints from the consumers regarding the inflated bills. The consumers who was supposed to get a power bill not exceeding Rs 2.500 for a month, have received bills worth Rs 1.5 lakh or more. This led them to stage a protest in front of the JUVNL office,” said the SDO.
Singh, when queried, said the Mango area has over 60,000 consumers which subscribe to the JUVNL power.
“Quess Corp has bagged the contract for meter-reading and spot-billing, the JUVNL would get the work done through the casual workers. The officials of Quess Corp use to take snap of the meter and having transferred the data into a printer, they use to issue a printout containing details about the power bills to the consumers on a single victim,� he noted.
Significantly, one of the protestors, ParitoshSingh of Mango said ” I am shocked to see my bill to be Rs 50,000. Though I have been receiving bill of Rs800 per month but this time it has been shocking. I think the department must call a probe into irregularities involved in billing system�.