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Online water bills system crashes
The online system, which was started three months ago to check water bills and send SMS alerts to city residents, has reportedly crashed.
The online system, which was started three months ago to check water bills and send SMS alerts to city residents, has reportedly crashed.
On August 14, former municipal corporation (MC) mayor Subhash Chawla had launched the Management Information System (MIS) of water billing. He said considering increasing population there was a need for technical switch to manage water billing data.
Surprisingly, the system worked for just three months and now, the MC is preparing its own software.
A senior MC official said they were using the software of National Informatics Centre (NIC) and for these services they had even signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with the National Institute of Electronics and Information Technology (NIELIT) and the directorate of telecommunication (DoT). But they told them to develop their own software.
The official said: “We are in the process of developing our own software and hopefully will start the service by October-end.”
The Chandigarh municipal corporation started the service so that consumers can submit their meter reading online and get their bills through email.
The move came after the MC found a long list of defaulters and disconnected nearly 1,800 connections in the past three months.
“Earlier many consumers were complaining that they were not getting water bills on time, which caused a delay in payment, but unfortunately, the system did not work,” RC Diwan, superintending engineer, public health department, MC, said.