Responding to complaints of electricity bill spikes, Tenaga Nasional Berhad (TNB) Chairman, Datuk Seri Mahdzir Khalid said that the higher bills were due to Malaysians staying at home.
He shared that most people were spending more time at home during the MCO period which started on 18th March 2020. Malaysians working from home and children that didn’t go to school have directly causes an increase in the usage of electricity.
Mahdzir Khalid added that those who are stranded at their hometowns during the school holidays had also recorded a decrease of electricity usage in the city while the usage at hometowns had increased.
20-50% increased usage for home users
During the MCO period, TNB reported an increase between 20-50% for residential sectors and this resulted in a higher billing compared to their usual monthly bills. He said that consumers had gone to social channels to state their confusion and he explained that TNB had used a prorated method to ensure that consumers do not get overcharged. He iterated that TNB’s prorated method was also reviewed and approved by the Energy Commission.
As explained by the electric utility company, the usage of the actual electricity reading will be divided equally across the number of months. The monthly usage will be multiplied with the tariff block rate for each month to ensure all users will get to benefit from the lower 200kWh, 100kWh and 300kWh block rate for each month.
Easy payment plan available
According to TNB Chief Retail Officer Megat Jalaludin Megat Hassan, TNB customers may now choose to pay for their March to May electricity bills by partial payments from now until December. He said that this easy payment scheme is open to approximately 7.7 million users automatically and they don’t impose any additional surcharge for instalments.
This means if the outstanding bill is RM600, the bill remains at RM600 with no extra charge and they will bill the user monthly until December 2020. As announced previously, they won’t be issuing any disconnection notices for users with outstanding payment until 31st July 2020.
For those that need an explanation of their electricity bill, are urged to contact TNB Careline at 1-300-88-5454 or visit their nearest Tenaga outlet.
[ SOURCE 2 , IMAGE SOURCE ]
