Dear Editor,
There is a GPL Disconnection notice with a nice, festive border being published in all the newspapers (SN, December 30, page 13). Right in the middle of it, there is something which will be very painful to many people who are struggling to pay their bills every month.
GPL tells us in this cheerfully decorated notice that if you are disconnected for an outstanding balance, you’ll have to pay that bill, a reconnection fee of $3200 and an increased security deposit of 6 times the average of your monthly bill.
Let’s say you were struggling to pay a light bill of $10,000 a month while buying things for your children’s school, paying bills for groceries, water, making mortgage or rent payments, buying gasoline for a motorbike or car or paying minibus fares, paying cell phone expenses, and maybe buying a few beers with some friends on a Saturday.
Let’s say you just happened not to be able to pay your light bill and got disconnected (maybe it came late or maybe you didn’t get a chance to pay on time or maybe you just couldn’t make it). Along with all of those expenses, you now will have to pay a reconnection fee of $3200 and a security deposit of $60,000. If you were struggling before, you can imagine what effect that will have.
Do you ever get back your security deposit? Maybe if you don’t want electricity any more from GPL because you’re buying your own million dollar generator to supply your own electricity. If that’s an option then there’s no need to worry too much about the new security deposit. Unfortunately, that isn’t an option for many of the people who struggle every month to make ends meet.
Let’s say things are bad and you’re struggling and you get disconnected three months in a row. There’s nothing in that notice to say you don’t have to pay the deposit each time. So, that’s $9600 in reconnection fees and $180,000 in security deposits in 3 months. GPL should just come straight out and say that postpaid electricity is not for poor people and if you know you might get disconnected then you’d better get a prepaid meter, whether you like it or not and whether it’s convenient or not and whether you want it or not.
What GPL didn’t bother to tell us is that under the law governing it, the relationship between GPL and its customers is by contract. The law sets out the things that have to be in that contract. So, if you want electricity, you tell GPL (probably in a form) where you want electricity, when you want it to start, the maximum power you want and the minimum time you’ll need it for. They then tell you a number of things (probably in another form) like charges. One of the things they must tell you is how much the security deposit will be. If you agree to those things (probably by signing something, though that isn’t necessary) you’ll have a contract for the supply of electricity.
The notice says that the new security deposit is “an increased security deposit”. So what happens to all the people who already have electricity and already have a contract with a different and lower security deposit, which they’ve probably already paid? The law tells GPL what it should do if a person’s security deposit becomes invalid or insufficient. It does not say that GPL can increase everybody’s security deposit in the way that it wants to.
Can someone wake up tomorrow and change something they already agreed with you just so? Maybe one of the forms says GPL can, but even if it didn’t, and even if it couldn’t do that whether or not the contract said so, would you really be in a position – if you already can’t afford to pay your light bill – to take big and powerful GPL on by taking it to court or to the Public Utilities Commission? More likely you’re going to get a prepaid meter, whether you wanted one or not and whether it’s convenient or not after the first time you get disconnected and have to pay the new security deposit.
Depending on how you look at it, GPL’s new policy in its nicely decorated Christmas notice is either unlawful conduct and a breach of contract or the casual and unfair exploitation of poor people who, it seems, have been gifted electricity as a favour from GPL, who can just as easily take it away.
Yours faithfully,
Kamal Ramkarran
