Patna, Oct. 11: Patna Electricity Supply Undertaking (Pesu) today introduced the hand-held bill generation system in its New Capital division after its success in other divisions.

Under the system, a meter reader from the electricity department would come to the consumer’s home with the machine, jot down the reading and generate the bill instantly.

Of Pesu’s 10 divisions, which cater to around 3.25 lakh consumers, the undertaking has so far implemented the service in six divisions — Gardanibagh, Patliputra, Dakbungalow, Bankipore, Gulzarbagh and Rajendra Nagar.

Pesu general manager SKP Singh said the service would soon be introduced in the remaining three divisions of Kankerbagh, Danapur and Patna City.

Singh told The Telegraph: “On-the-spot bill delivery has been a great success. It has helped increase revenue collection and that’s why we decided to extend the service.”

The introduction of the hand-held billing service in the New Capital division would provide better service to around 50,000 consumers. Areas falling along the sides of Bailey Road, right from Jagdeo Path overbridge to Income Tax roundabout, fall under this division.

Singh said the introduction of the service has helped Pesu generate more revenue as it has removed bottlenecks like employees not being able to take readings properly, generating and distributing bills, consumers not getting bills on time and others.

He added that Pesu’s revenue had increased to Rs 63 crore last month in comparison to earlier average collections of Rs 40 crore to Rs 45 crore.

When pointed out that consumers of divisions where the service has been in use for the past five to six months were not receiving timely electricity bills, Singh said presently the bills are being distributed at intervals of one-and-a-half month rather than a month.

Singh added that owing to untrained employees involved in taking meter readings, bills could not be distributed at the end of each month. Singh expressed hope that things would be streamlined in the next few months, as people would start getting bills at an interval of every 30 to 35 days.

“It is quite obvious that consumers would get an accumulated bill for two or three months when the service is being implemented for the first time in a particular area but after the second and third bills, things would stabilise,” said Singh.

He added: “Now, people will not complain about the genuineness of the bills as it would be generated right before them besides getting at least 15 days time for depositing the amount.”

“After implementation of the hand-held billing service, we get at least 15 days’ time for depositing the bill amount unlike in the past when we used to get two to three days. But the problem is that we do not get the bill on time. We get our electricity bill at an interval of one-and-a-half or two months,” said Amitesh Mani Singh, a resident of Ashiana Nagar.

Vijay Prasad, a resident of New Patliputra, said: “We don’t know when the meter reader arrives and leaves. We wait for the reader after completion of 30 days of the cycle but we find that the bill has been tagged with the meter.”