KESCo call centre: Too busy to be true

DIAL THE special telephone number 1912 allotted to the KESCo call centre and the response is an engaged tone. Try it any number of times but the response is the same. Like several other projects of KESCo, the call centre opened by it with much fanfare has also proved to be a damp squib.

A flashback: The call centre was inaugurated during the regime of the previous managing director of KESCo Sudhir Garg. The task assigned to the call centre was to register complaints of consumers and allot them a complaint number.

This complaint was then transferred to the respective substations of KESCo for further action. The substation in turn had the responsibility of informing the status of complaint to the call centre. Besides, the consumers were also able to know the status of their complaint from the call centre just by referring to their complaint number.

However, the efficiency of KESCo and its work culture has been exposed by the failure of the call centre. Within a year of its inauguration, the call centre has become defunct. Whenever a consumer dials the special telephone number 1912, instead of a reply from the call centre employee he only hears an engaged tone.  Another shocking revelation is that senior officials of KESCo are themselves not aware of the current status of the call centre.

When contacted, general manager (II) of KESCo Shashikant initially stated that the call centre was working but when he was informed about the constant engaged tone on special telephone number 1912, he feigned ignorance. Other senior officials of KESCo also feigned ignorance about the current status of the call centre.      

The entire information collection and dissipation system of KESCo is faulty.  Even the central control room of KESCo operating from the Bijlighar substation does not get all the information about the local faults at substations. The report of transformer failures given by the central control room is not accurate and it hardly gives any information about the faults and their status to consumers.

The ultimate sufferers of KESCo’s inefficiency are the consumers who are left groping in the dark. Such is the state of affairs that if a consumer wants to get his complaint registered at his local substation on telephone, then the only tone he hears on dialling the substation’s number is an engaged tone. 

Whenever there is a local fault or a power crisis in any area, then the possibility of telephone of the substation of that area becoming engaged increases.

Several complaints have come to light that whenever there is a transformer failure or local fault, a consumer gets to hear an engaged tone on dialling the substation’s number.