Doha - Consumers can soon hope to access customer service facilities at the Kahramaa office in Al Musherib.
The Customer Services Department (CSD) of Kahramaa (Qatar General Electricity and Water Corporation) is to shortly open a new branch in the corporation's General Services Department building in Musherib in downtown Doha, according to Ahmed Ali Al Mohannadi, Kahramaa's CSD Manager.
Al Mohannadi said in an interview published in the latest issue of 'Kahramaa', an in-house publication, that his department also intended to open a call centre for customer services and facilitate a visitor to access all the units at the CSD building in Musherib.
Referring to the time required to get electricity and water supply resumed after a disruption, Al Mohannadi said with paper work completed, it could be done the same day.
"The utility supplies can reach a customer within a record time of less than two hours if all papers are in order," he said.
Customers applying for connection for the first time have to follow certain procedures, starting with a request submitted to Kahramaa.
A new customer (property owner) has to submit a connection request to the main CSD center through a contracting company, approved by Kahramaa.
Asked about the new meter reading procedures, Al Mohannadi explained that Kahramaa paid maximum attention to meter reading as it was the mainstay of the corporation's revenue.
Accuracy is ensured in actual meter readings taken on a monthly basis for every customer, Al Mohannadi said. A portable electronic device is used to take the readings.
This is a fool-proof system and would help Kahramma in taking readings with the help of remote electronic device in the near future, he said. Manual reading is done away with.
The readings taken with the help of the portable electronic device are then transferred to a central database in the CSD for updating the data of every customer in order to produce a monthly bill.
The bills are based on accurate meter readings and actual consumption figures of every customer.
The new system was started in February this year for the month of January.
The monthly bill is calculated on the basis of the difference between the previous and the present meter readings, which represents a customer's actual monthly consumption in kilowatt (kw) for electricity and cubic metres for water.
The segmentation system is applied to the bill as per the category of customer, whether residential, commercial or industrial, with separate tariffs applied in case of each.
For the residential category, electricity consumed up to 4,000 kws costs eight dirhams per kw, while consumptions above the first 4,000 kws cost 10 dirhams per kw.
The electricity bill for the commercial category is calculated on the basis of eight dirhams per kws for consumption up to 4,000 kws, 10 dirhams for consumption from 4,000 to 15,000 kws and 12 dirhams per kw for consumption above 15,000 kws.
Al Mohannadi said the other categories have a special calculation method, particularly those subsidized by the government such as the industrial sector and hotels.
The price of one cubic metre of water is QR 4.40 for all categories of customers, he said.
© The Peninsula 2005
