Sir,
It is a wise wisdom somehow or other State Power Department could collect revenue from the electricity power Consumers of State GovernmentEmployees two times in a year (Jan. & July) by way of enforcing compulsory production of No Due Certificate for passing monthly salary by the Treasury Office. But the big question is; Is there any mechanism for collection of revenues from the Central Govt. employees, employees of Autonomous Institutes like Manipur University, Central Agricultural University (non-treasury transaction) and business establishments etc.
It is also surprising why bill payments are made compulsory only two times in a year instead of making it compulsory for every month? The reason could be Revenue Collection Section of the department have to handle too voluminous traditional bill books, thick Registers and Ledger books etc for preparing bills and onward distribution manually to each consumers.
Under the present system, as the monthly bills are not made available to each consumers’ residence, as such if one has to obtain No Due Certificate, in most cases the Consumer / the employee has to first obtain a bill from the dealing assistant normally Lady staff who attends office in between 11.00 to 11.30 a.m and then make payment in the Counter to clear the bill against TR 5 where 2 or 3 staff are engaged and takes 3-4 minutes to process and clear the bill. Then along with the TR 5 payment receipt one has to submit the details in a prescribed form /certificate in triplicate normally available @Rs.10/- per three copies. After duly filled in the form /certificate has to be submitted for signature and has to collect on the next day. Unfortunately, if either any of the concerned AE or EE is on official tour or on urgent meeting certificates are not signed even the second day and has to collect on the third day.
It is almost a decade over the National e-governance plan (2003-2007) have launched and as an impact Information Communication Technologies (ICTs) are moving from enabling tool to being recognised as potential tools of empowerment. It is the present situation now, while traveling in a Car one can transfer money to any part of the globe and can draw money from any ATM boot across the country. When we can pay LIC premium, Mobile bills, Air ticketing etc.etc all on online, why not possible electric billing and payment on online?? That too in a highly technical department manned by qualified Engineers!!.All these can happen by the application of ICT Tools into connectivity, networking, setting up systems for processing information and delivering the required services as 24X7 convenience to citizens in transaction dealing with government.
When monthly bills are transmitted by SMS to all the Consumers, every employees will automatically register their Mobile Nos. to the Revenue Section of the Department just to get the bill on time and payments can be made online either self or by the concerned DDO. If required, detailed bill can be downloaded. Preparing bill for a Consumer is matter of entering few numerical datas in seconds in the prescribed database format by the Computer operators, the rest softwares will do like generating bills and transmitting in the form of SMS to each Consumers. By facilitating online payment, the revenue will be instantly credited to the relevant Head of Account. This will not only gear up significant increase in revenue collection but also will ease the burden of tax payment by the Power Deptt.to other sources of Power suppliers. When this is done, one third of the staff can effectively do all the activities of revenue collection and at the same time this will facilitate to track the defaulters within seconds at the finger tip.
Fund may not be an issue as there is already provision for earmarking 10% of the budget under e-governance plan. Above all, I believe, National Informatics Centre (NIC) will be happy to extend all required technical support and guidelines and in sourcing of funds from the Union Ministry of Communications and Information Technology.
Yours faithfully,
M.S.Khaidem
Imphal East, Manipur.
ms_khaidem05@yahoo.com.