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Dhaka Friday,  Mar 29, 2024

Pre-paid Meter Users Are Being Harassed: State Minister  

Mahfuj Risad

The state minister for Power, Energy and Mineral Resources Nasrul Hamid has agreed that the pre-paid power customers are being the victim of various types of harassments and he also directed the related officials to relieve the customers immediately from the oppression.

The state minister said so in a meeting held at the power division on Wednesday. He also alleged that the customers are even forced to pay extra bills.

The total number of electricity subscriber is about 2 crore and 40 lacs in the country and only 4 lac and 33 thousands of them are pre-paid meter users. Related sources claimed that, there are allegations on the power distributors as they’re said to be charging more bills than that is fixed by the Bangladesh Energy Regulatory Commission (BERC). Pointing on this issue, the state minister said that, the government is trying to eradicate such wrongdoings by introducing pre-paid meter system. But, unfortunately, the pre-paid customers are being harassed by various means. He said that, it should be fixed soon.

The power distributors are alleged to be forcing the pre-paid customers to stay in the queue for up to more than 2 hours to pay their bills and misleading or ignored them by saying that- ‘the bill payment server is down’ at times. Nasrul Hamid strongly stood against such kind of misconducts to the customers.

The state minister added that, an app will be developed for the customers so that they can pay their bills from home. He also directed all the power distributors to bill their customers according to the defined rate of BERC.

Among others power secretary Dr. Ahmed Kaykaus, PDB chairman engineer Khaled Mahmud, REB chairman major general Moeen Uddin and other power distributor agency chiefs were present at the meeting.

According to the meeting sources, the state minister asked the power distributor authorities about the alleged extra bill charging and he also directed them to stop these malpractices. However, the distributor authorities have denied the allegations at the meeting saying that they’re not charging any extra bills from the customers.

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