Minister urges PUC to speed up review of utility bills |11 June 2021

Amid increasing calls from the public for rectification of electricity bills, the Minister for Agriculture, Climate Change and Environment, Flavien Joubert, has urged the Public Utilities Corporation (PUC) to take on the issue in an accelerated manner and resolve to satisfy most customer complaints by early June.

The minister was in the National Assembly last week together with PUC to provide explanation on the reasons clients were experiencing such problems with their bills.

The minister cited errors in recording of consumption as well as the fact that bills were being estimated at the beginning of the year, which created additional room for confusion among clients.

However, the minister highlighted that the bill increases were possible during the first part of the year as the cost of fuel had increased in the past six months.

PUC on its side explained that it was undertaking a process to rectify these problematic cases through its customer care system and that numerous cases had been addressed at the time of making the statement, with some clients seeing a reduction in their bills upon review.

The minister’s demand to PUC is to dedicate staff to complete the process for those clients whose bills had been estimated and who had complained to PUC, and also to report to government, statistics on cases received and those that they have been able to resolve.

Now that all meters are being directly read, PUC has also been requested to address information collection by meter readers visiting households so as to reduce the level of reporting errors.

The ministry will, within the coming two weeks, review the situation together with PUC and identify additional measures that are needed to maintain customer satisfaction.  

Press release from the Ministry of Agriculture, Climate Change and Environment