People queue up in large numbers to deposit the electricity bill at Golpatthar in Gaya on Wednesday. Picture by Suman

Gaya, Aug. 24: Power has always bothered the residents of this city. Despite an increased electricity supply in the recent times, power consumers are now facing a new problem.

Depositing electricity bills every month has become a Herculean task for the residents of Gaya owing to poor infrastructure like shortage of counters as well as employees at the deposit counters of Bihar State Electricity Board (BSEB).

Power bills are deposited at three places in Gaya —sub-division-I (towards east of Gandhi Maidan), sub-division-II (Chand Chaura) and sub-division-III (Golpatthar).

Long queues at the counters of the three sub-divisions are a routine affair these days. Moreover, the places where the counters have been made, lacks space where people could stand in a systematic manner.

Instead, they stand on the road causing immense traffic congestion. The situation has tuned worse day-by-day and people in queues cover almost half the width of the always busy Gautam Buddha Road in front of the BSEB office.

This leads to traffic clogging and sometimes verbal duel between people who stand there to deposit the bill and the passers by. A similar situation occurred today when people queued up at the BSEB office near Golpatthar blocking half the road.

One of the consumers in queue Manoj Kumar told The Telegraph that he has been standing for more than three hours to pay the bill. Manoj and some other consumers complained that they do not get the power bills in time.

The BSEB provides rebate on payment of power bills within a certain period. But the period between delivery of the power bills to the consumers and the last date fixed to avail the rebate is limited.

As the rebate period is limited and every consumer wants to avail the discount, consumers try to deposit the bills within the period, which leads to heavy rush at the counters.

According to a BSEB official there is shortage of employees for collection of power bills at the counters. At sub-division-I there is only one person, while two each are posted at sub-division-II and III, which is not adequate for around 43,000 consumers within Gaya town.

BSEB has given the contract for meter reading and distribution of power bills to Infosoft, a private company, since December 2010. At least 60 personnel have been engaged in meter reading and distribution of power bills. According to the contract, BSEB has to pay Rs 3.5 to the company against meter reading and distribution of power bills.

The company had engaged the personnel with a promise to pay Rs 1.5 per meter reading simultaneously with distribution of power bills. However, payment of the personnel has not been regular. In course of metre reading, the personnel have been asked to take a photograph of the current metre reading from their cell phone. However, the employees have purchased cell phones with camera from their own money.

On being contacted, Infosoft head in Gaya, Anjani Kumar Singh, said that the bills of the company have been deposited with the BSEB. As soon as the payment is made by the BSEB, remuneration to the personnel will also become regular.