If the Ceylon Electricity Board (CEB) stops or limits the issuance of electricity bills, electricity consumers should be given the benefit of the reduced cost, stated the Electricity Consumers' Association (ECA).

Speaking to The Daily Morning, ECA General Secretary Sanjeewa Dhammika said that the CEB is currently preparing to stop the issuance of electricity bills. Claiming that he has been informed by the CEB and the Public Utilities Commission of Sri Lanka that the cost of printing one bill is around Rs. 65, he said that the stopping of the issuance of bills would save around Rs. 468,000,000 for the CEB. “The CEB issues about 7.2 million bills per month. If they stop issuing bills, a massive cost reduction is certain. In addition to the absence of the cost of printing, there will be other forms of cost reductions too. For instance, if the bills are not issued, there will be no need to have meter readers in the current numbers. When salaries don’t have to be paid for them, it will also save a lot of money. So electricity consumers should receive the benefit of it,” he said.

Dhammika also raised concerns over the possible difficulties that electricity consumers would have to face when the printed bills are not issued. “We have no problem with updating these services with technology, but Sri Lanka is a country with a low level of knowledge related to technology, especially since there are elderly people who don’t use mobile phones, while some don’t have mobile phones with the required facilities. A project of this nature should be implemented with an alternative for such people.”

With the economic crisis in the country, there was a lot of talk about reducing unnecessary expenses of loss-making government institutions and bringing them to a profitable state. Among them, the CEB – one of the main institutions – has taken a number of measures such as raising electricity tariffs with the aim of increasing its income. As another part of the same programme, the CEB's attention has been paid to issuing electricity bills through short messaging service technology-based text messages, instead of issuing printed bills.