Internet outage hindering electricity tariff payment

Unable to recharge prepaid meters, households face blackout in districts

OUR CORRESPONDENTS | Published: July 24, 2024 19:57:51

People in Rajshahi, Cox's Bazar, Sylhet, Chandpur and Khulna districts as elsewhere across the county are in a great fix as they cannot recharge their electricity prepaid meters due to closure of the internet system and banks.
The power subscribers cannot recharge the RP paid meter cards even after waiting for hours at the vending stations.
In Rajshahi, people in the city were seen rushing to the head office of the Northern Electricity Supply and Distribution Company Limited in order to recharge their prepaid meters as they could not recharge them online due to the internet service disruption.
Visiting the head office on Monday, subscribers were seen standing in long queues even for several hours to get a serial to recharge their meters.
Isahak Hossain, a resident of Ramchandrapur area in Rajshahi city, said his electricity connection was suspended after the balance of his prepaid meter ran out.
"As I couldn't recharge the meter in any way, I had to rush to the NESCO head office for a solution," he added.
NESCO chief engineer Jakir Hossain said that they had set up eight vending machines to solve the existing crisis for the time being.
The customers could recharge their prepaid meters using those vending machines.
According to the officials, there are 0.49 million (4.90 lakh) prepaid meters under NESCO in the Rajshahi division.
In Cox's Bazar, internet service disruption has triggered sufferings for more than 0.1 million (one lakh) people in the district.
As the electricity pre-paid metres are inoperative and mobile money transfer service bKash is not functioning people cannot pay their electricity bills.
As a result, thousands of households are plunged into darkness.
Azijun Naher, user of a pre-paid meter, said, "My house is immersed in darkness for the last four days. The electricity pre-paid metre ran out of balance almost four days back. Now it is not possible to recharge the pre-paid metre."
In Sylhet, most of the prepaid card holders are suffering extremely for being unable to pay their electricity bills thank to the internet blackout.
Long queues for power recharge have been seen in front of all the three offices of BPDB's sales and distribution divisions in the city areas since Monday.
Emdadul Islam of the city's Shahjalal Uposhahar went to the nearby office at 10:00 am on Monday and stood in a queue. He got the power recharge after two hours.
Same was the experience of MA Matin of Uposhahar's E block. He, however, managed it after over an hour from a cell phone recharge point at the Uposhahar main road on Sunday afternoon.
An official at the PDB said they did not get any complaints about power snap from subscribers yet. However, some parts of the city are under the coverage of the prepaid meter system.
In Chandpur, the power consumers have been undergoing untold miseries in the district town for the past for days because of the internet outage hampering prepaid meter recharge and eventually power blackout.
They have been in darkness for want of electricity in houses as their prepaid meters are not working due to zero balance.
Three are 80,000 prepaid meter users in Chandpur Sadar and municipality areas, almost all of whom are rushing to Chandpur PDB's power sale and distribution office for recharging their meters.
Until 2.30 pm on Monday, the FE correspondent saw about 2,500 people standing in a long queue and 2,000 women in a queue on PDB office premises to avail the service.
A large number of people were eagerly waiting to get recharge in their prepaid meters at Natun Bazar in the town.
PDB's Distribution and Sale Department's assistant engineers Raihan Sharif and Saiful Islam told the FE that there were 80,000 prepaid meters (both domestic and commercial) in Chandpur Sadar and municipality areas.
They said that they were unable to cope with the rush of consumers. They have been working until midnight for the past three days to provide relentless service.
They also assured that everything would be all right within next two days.
They have advised people to recharge prepaid meters through Nagad money transfer service.
In Khulna, sufferings of the people have mounted for the halt to the internet service.
Hundreds of people are standing in lines waiting for recharging the prepaid meter cards at the divisional charging point.
Many of the consumers' electricity lines have been disconnected due to non-payment in time.
Abul Kalam, a consumer of the city, usually recharges his prepaid meter through bKash Nagod or Rocket. But he cannot do so because of the internet system failure. So he cannot pay his electricity bill and now his connection is cut off.
Sub-divisional Engineer Kamrul Hassan Bhuiyan said that the command to disconnect lines was given previously for nonpayment of electricity bills.