‘40% of Tangedco customers yet to enrol for SMS facility’

About 40% of domestic customers of the Tamil Nadu Generation and Distribution Corporation Ltd. (Tangedco) in the State are yet to enrol for the SMS alert facility, according to a top official of the State power utility.

Tangedco has about 2.82 crore customers. Excluding those falling under the exempted categories, the number of paying customers would be around 1.50 crore.

M. Manoharan, Director (Finance), Tangedco, said that thanks to the text message alert facility, which sends reminders to customers about payment dues, incidences of default had reduced from 5% to 2%.

The power utility is looking to boost the proportion of its customers making use of alternative modes of payment, such as post offices, net banking and other forms of online payment, to 50% from 28% at present. Around 45 lakh customers currently use alternative methods of payment.

“The Centre has been pushing us to move towards alternative payment systems to ensure that customers don’t have to visit our centres and wait in queues to make payments,” Mr. Manoharan said.

Tangedco had around 5,000 bill payment centres, and with the shift to alternative modes of payment, it would be looking at rationalising the number of such centres, he said.