Discoms asked to issue monthly bills

Under attack for significant hike in electricity tariff, the city government has asked private power distribution companies to issue bills on a monthly basis instead of bi-monthly.

Top officials in the government said the instruction has already been issued to discoms to prepare bills every month so that people don’t face the burden of paying a “large amount of money at one go”.

Flooded with complaints of inflated bills, chief minister Sheila Dikshit earlier this month had issued direction for redressal of grievances urgently, and had asked discoms to examine their billing syst-em.

Social activist Arvind Kejriwal on Sunday had led a protest against the city government
on power tariff hike, and as-ked people not to pay power bills.

Scores of resident welfare associations have complained of inflated bills and some ha-
ve even resolved not to pay them.

The power tariff for domestic consumers was hiked by a steep 26 per cent in June, which came as a shock to people already burdened by high inflation and petrol price rise.

The new tariff came into effect on July 1. The average hike was 20.87 per cent for all segments.