Spike in utility bills after meter readers engaged in survey works

Households across the city have been hit with unusually high electricity and water bills this month and, in many cases, double the usual amount and the reason traces back to the recently concluded Social and Educational Survey.

With hundreds of the Bangalore Water Supply and Sewerage Board (BWSSB) and Bescom meter readers diverted for nearly a month to work as enumerators, routine meter checks were disrupted, leaving billing cycles dependent on estimated readings.

During the survey, a large portion of the BWSSB and Bescom’s meter readers, data-entry workers and field staff were reassigned as enumerators. With their routine duties paused for more than a month, both utilities were relying on provisional or average-based billing.

Instead of visiting households and recording actual consumption, the system generated an estimated bill based on past usage. Once the survey ended and staff returned, their first task was to collect all the pending physical readings and the system added the missing units from the previous cycles onto the current month’s bill, an enumerator said.

“For households, this looks like an abrupt jump. But what shows up on paper as this month’s units is actually a combined total of whatever was used during the period when readings were not taken. For example, a family that normally pays around ₹600 for water and ₹800 for electricity ended up receiving bills of ₹1,500 to ₹2,000 or more because unbilled usage was captured in a single cycle,” Mahesh B., a BWSSB employee said.

Smaller households and tenants appear to have felt the shock more sharply. “I usually pay around ₹500 for electricity and water, but this month the bill came up to over ₹1,100. At first, we had no idea why it was so high, but later, we saw that the extra amount was due to the missed readings during the survey as mentioned in the bill,” said George J., a resident of Benson Town.

A senior official in the Greater Bengaluru Authority admitted that every department had experienced some degree of disruption. “When such a large number of staff are drawn into a State-wide survey, the effect on other services is inevitable. It takes time for the system to stabilise and during such an exercise, we cannot ask staff to focus on anywhere else,” the official said.