Hearing grievances of people over the service of Mangalore Electricity Supply Company (MESCOM) Limited at a public hearing here on Thursday, Karnataka Electricity Regulatory Commission Chairman Shambu Dayal Meena asked MESCOM to work towards improving its image and branding.
In his address at the end of the public hearing on MESCOM’s plea seeking hike in power tariff, Mr. Meena said that MESCOM needs to improve on its service to customers. “Cooking tasty food is of no use if the service is poor,” he said.
While stating that there is a lot of scope for MESCOM to improve, Mr. Meena said that there was no need for directions of KERC for MESCOM to hold training programmes for its personnel and holding awareness programmes for customers. “It is your duty,” he said and advised MESCOM personnel to behave in a proper way with customers. Speaking to reporters later, Mr. Meena said that KERC will discuss with electricity supply company officials about payment of power bills using digital wallets during the review meeting to be held shortly. It will also look into collection of ₹ 10 for each payment of bills done using UPI platform.
MESCOM Managing Director Snehal R. said that MESCOM is taking steps to train its personnel and to have better interaction with customers. The problem of low voltage will be largely addressed with the commissioning of 130 feeders under the Nirantara Jyoti Scheme. So far, four feeders have been commissioned.
Ms. Snehal said that MESCOM has so far regularised 10,000 illegal connections used for running pumpsets. Process has been initiated to regularise the remaining 16,000 connections. MESCOM is taking steps to improve ease of doing business, she said.