Power bills probe

His Royal Highness Prince Salman bin Hamad Al Khalifa, the Crown Prince, Deputy Supreme Commander and First Deputy Prime Minister, yesterday directed the National Audit Office (NAO) to carry out an investigation into the ways of calculating electricity and water bills. This came as he chaired a meeting of the Government Executive Committee, at Gudaibiya Palace. The move aims to ensure that there are no technical and procedural deficiencies in the water and electricity billing mechanisms.

HRH the Crown Prince also directed the Electricity and Water Authority (EWA) to re-issue June, July, and August electricity and water bills for citizens at their primary residence (single account), based on last year’s issued amount. The Crown Prince stressed the importance of ensuring that the water and electricity billing system is not subject to cyber intrusion, as well as guaranteeing that individual water and electricity accounts are not being exploited for the benefit of commercial enterprises, contrary to the laws and regulations.

HRH the Crown Prince reiterated the importance of upholding the principles of fairness, accountability and responsibility, as well as using resources sustainably, in order to meet the aspirations of citizens and the Kingdom’s comprehensive development goals. The move comes in the wake of the statement issued by 30 MPs demanding EWA to scrap the current mechanism adopted to calculate the bills on a daily basis, which has resulted in “doubling the bill amounts”.

They said that the EWA was unfairly dividing the subsidised units as the unused ones weren’t compensated. Tribune earlier reported about residents receiving high water and electricity bills that were attributed to a technical glitch. It was learnt that the errors were caused by water meter readers following the digital updation process. Speaking to Tribune, a citizen, who doesn’t want to be identified, had said his electricity bill was in the normal range while the water bill was absurdly high. “The water bill was extremely high and I contacted the authorities regarding this.

I was told that the issue arose due to a technical glitch, which will be rectified soon. “The bill I received was for my office. Later, I would find that all the offices in the building received similar amounts in water bills,” he said. “I found out that the issue was due to a glitch in the water meter reader. Apparently, it counted the units, not in a linear manner, rather in a haphazard way.”