The Guyana Power and Light Inc said in a press release on Wednesday, that this modern system is also geared to the immediate allocation of a customer account and customer number on receipt of an application for electricity supply.
This project, the release stated, is being funded by the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) under the investment component of the Loss Reduction Programme and is scheduled to be fully implemented during the second quarter of this year.
And in order to accommodate a seamless transition from the existing system to the new CIS, GPL will be issuing two bills within a six-week period, representing consumption between January and February, and February and March this year. These bills will therefore become due for payment during April this year.
According to the release, originally one bill (January/February) would have been issued in March and the other (February/March) would have been issued in April, and their due dates would have been in April and in May respectively.
In the light of this change, the power company will not conduct any disconnection activities during April for outstanding balances on these bills, but it will continue to conduct its disconnection activities on previous unpaid balances. GPL is therefore encouraging customers to continue the good practice of settling their accounts in a timely manner.
GPL expects this situation to return to normalcy during May, with the issue of one bill per month. Meanwhile, the time between the date that meters are read and the issuance of bills will be reduced from an average of 32 days to an average of seven days.
The implementation of the CIS will significantly assist the company in its continuous efforts to provide an improved quality of service to its customers, the release added.
