At present, there are 36 million subscribers in the country and of them, 15 million are life lines which use 50 units of power every month. For this, they pay Tk 168 at the highest.
If they are given smart pre-paid metres then they will have to give an additional Tk 40 every month. If they install their own metres then the extra cost will be Tk 6000. Specialists have asked the rationale of giving smart pre paid metres to life line users.
To improve the quality of the rural people, the government is supplying power and have promised to take power to all homes in the current year but the additional cost burden on the general subscriber should be assessed, said specialists.
Energy specialist Shamsul Alam said: “Giving smart metres to life line subscribers is tantamount to a travesty. The rent of the metres will be higher than the bill.”
The price of general pre-paid metres begins from $28 (Tk 2,376) and smart pre-paid metres from $56 (Tk 4,752).
Specialists have asked why smart pre-paid metres are needed for subscribers who use power less than Tk 168.
Director General of Power Cell, B D Rahmatullah, said: “Subscribers are paying metre rent and paying for a long time will automatically recover the price of the metre.”
For life line users such metres are unethical and a burden.
The power department fixed the rent of the pre-paid metres without taking any directive from the Bangladesh Energy Regulatory Commission, BERC. In this, the subscriber has to pay Tk 40 per month which was Tk 10 earlier. Pre paid metres are not available in the market so the business remains in the hands of distribution companies.
A BERC official said: “We have told distribution companies that there is no logic in giving pre-paid metres to small users because they never steal power.”
The government should assess if this logical or not, he observed.
Energy specialist and BUET professor Dr Ijaz Hossain, says: “I do not see any reason to give pre-paid metres to those who are life line users. Therefore the old metres should be kept.”