Muscat: The Social Committee of the Shura Council discussed on Tuesday the issue of high electricity bills in several willayats for the past two months.
The meeting touched upon proposals and possible alternatives in this regard, as the issue made a fuzz on various social media in the past days.
During the meeting, some suggestions were presented, including the preference for reading calculation from the beginning of the month to the end of the month regularly, and cancelling the billing system currently in force and obliging companies in recording the reading on time or activating the self-reading mechanism from the subscriber by the end of the month.
The meeting also touched upon tariff governance frameworks imposed on subscribers, requirements for
supply licenses, mechanisms of the Authority for Public Services Regulation (AER) in activating oversight over the application of those requirements, protecting the interests of subscribers, reports of following up on subscribers' complaints in terms of volume, quality, and means of treatment.
The members of the Committee also discussed methods of calculating the bills based on the estimated reading, causes, and solutions.
This comes after many subscribers have raised complaints over receiving vastly inflated electricity bills, which, in some cases, touched hundreds of Rials for a single month.
Responding to this, the Authority issued a statement on Saturday urging power firms to address consumer complaints immediately.
It said that every subscriber has the right to communicate with the area service provider company, and the company must respond to subscribers’ complaints and clarify the bill details and the method of calculating the bill amount in a manner that guarantees the subscriber’s right.
The Authority also asked companies “to review all invoices submitted by the owners with an objection to their details, to ensure that there are no reasons that may have led to an increase in the value of consumption.”
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