Jaipur: Starting next fiscal year, water consumption bills in Rajasthan will be generated every month on a uniform cycle, just like electricity bills. To achieve this, the state Public Health Engineering Department (PHED) will launch a centralised water billing portal on April 1.Currently, water bill generation is managed by different third-party agencies across various districts, resulting in delays and irregular billing cycles. Officials said the new system will standardise this process, making consumer services significantly more efficient while granting department engineers more direct control.Beyond ensuring timely monthly bills, the portal will drastically simplify the process of updating consumer profiles, including changes to names, addresses and registered mobile numbers.“Now, a consumer just needs to make an application at the sub-division office for such changes in his or her profile. An assistant engineer of the sub-division office will update the profile by verifying documents in no time,” a PHED engineer said, noting that the old system of routing these requests through outsourced agencies was cumbersome and slow.Another major relief for consumers will be the real-time updating of bill payments. Under the existing setup, paid amounts often fail to reflect as cleared, showing up as outstanding in the next billing cycle.“If, say, a consumer pays a bill of Rs 2000, and it does not get updated in the next bill, which is for Rs 1,800, he or she has to pay Rs 3,800 to keep the connection on. It used to take up to 10 months for payments to be reflected and regularised. The new portal will eliminate such confusion by immediately reflecting payments,” an official explained.Despite the upgrades, officials acknowledged a looming operational challenge. With third-party agencies removed from the process, the entire responsibility of gathering meter readings will fall on the PHED.“The entire burden of meter-reading will be solely on the department. We don’t have enough meter readers at the sub-division offices, so we need a few information officers to carry out the exercise smoothly,” an official said.
