USAID has implemented similar project in other Discos including MEPCO. Commercial department in Discos is responsible for revenue collection from end consumers. This process includes metre reading, bill printing through bill collection. The current metre reading practice at Discos is paper based. This process is very time consuming and is vulnerable to errors. Human intervention at multiple levels within billing process leads to manipulation of data and results in incorrect billing. This increases the number of customer complaints and delay in bill collection and often results in losses to Discos.
The USAID Power Distribution Programme has successfully implemented a metre reading project at Islamabad Electric Supply Company (IESCO) to improve the metre reading practices by introducing technology. Power Distribution Programme in close consultation of IESCO management identified a low cost activity that helped to replace paper based metre reading practices with electronic metre reading such as the introduction of handheld devices for metre reading.
The project has been implemented at IESCO Kamalabad subdivision. Subdivision metre readers were provided on field training about the new metre reading techniques and devices. Meter reader has to take the metre snap after manually punching in the metre dial value. Kamalabad subdivision consumers received the bill for the month of May that was read by using these new devices.
The Subdivision Officer (SDO) of Kamalabad, Mohammad Riaz while talking about this activity expressed his gratitude to USAID Power Distribution Program for introducing technology in metre reading practice that has helped in reducing customer complaints. He remarked that the intervention helped his staff to work more efficiently while saving on average 2-3 hours per day of each metre reader. He envisaged that in next step if this system was implemented on Division and Circle level it would help to reduce the billing cycle.
This intervention ensures the correct and timely bill to consumer. HHU has helped in identifying the under billed consumers by introducing integrity in metre reading process and helped in improvements in the revenue collection of the subdivision Kamalabad. IESCO has shown interest in this project and likely to expand this activity to other divisions and circles.