May 15, 2020 (LBO) - These guidelines include the interim measures suggested to be followed by Ceylon Electricity Board (CEB) and Lanka Electricity Company Pvt. Ltd (LECO) in order to facilitate the issuance of utility bills and to facilitate the Customer with additional services (if required) for the payment of bills during the curfew period and immediate aftermath.
This will further envisage the advancement and securing of the consumers' entitlements for concessionary rates that are currently been provided during the respective billing cycle and prevent any denial or restrictions to such entitlements due to the modality of bill calculation and issuance of bills.
This will further envisage the advancement and securing of the consumers' entitlements for concessionary rates that are currently been provided during the respective billing cycle and prevent any denial or restrictions to such entitlements due to the modality of bill calculation and issuance of bills.
1. Issuance of Bills CEB/LECO may provide facilities to issue and pay electricity bills as follows; Actual Bills shall be issued at the first instance possible by following the procedure given here. This includes retail and bulk meters which are either read physically by visiting or read remotely.
a. Consumers (both retail and bulk) shall be issued with bills based on their actual consumption.
b. The principal of issuance of electricity bills to customers during this period shall be as follows;
i. Customers whose meters have been read by visiting physically or through remote monitoring following regular billing cycle should be issued with actual monthly bills.
ii. In an event of a meter is read after a period longer than one month and if the bills are not issued for that period, CEB/LECO shall calculate the bills on the pro-rated basis and shall issue separate bills for each monthly billing period.
iii. In an event of a meter being read after a period longer than a month and some bills are issued for such period on any estimation basis, a correction shall, then be applied to all the estimated bills individually assuming that the particular customer has consumed the total read consumption evenly during the period and such correction shall be applied at the proceeding billing cycle.
2. Other Related Matters (considerations)
• Customers should be educated that they will not be adversely affected due to the delay in issuance of monthly bill and the prevailing incremental blocks in the electricity tariff will be applied in a fair manner in calculating their bills. Example: if the meter reading is done after 60 days from the previous bill issuance date and the total consumption for the said period is less than 120 units, first 60 units will be billed at Rs.
2.50 per unit and the next 60 units at Rs.
4.85 per unit and so on.
• If CEB/LECO has issued two or more monthly bills together for the curfew period and immediately after, it is requested to consider either granting concessionary terms of payments for customers and obtain the Commission’s approval where necessary.
• Until such concessionary terms are established and communicated to customers, CEB/LECO is requested to avoid disconnection of electricity supply of customers for non-payments.
• It is recommended to encourage customers to make payments via the applications/ facilities that have been already introduced by the utility providers.
• Introduction of mobile payment kiosks for customers to settle the bills and issuing a payment confirmation upon settling the bills.