Sri Lanka It's Happening

March 27, 2007

It's now more than a month since we applied for a connection to the electricity grid. The form is in Sinhala but you have to fill it up in English! then you have to get it signed by an official known as a 'Grama Niladari'. This is just a useless piece of beurocracy that should have been scrapped long ago.

Once you get the form filled up, you need to take it to the bank and depost Rs 250 into the electricity board account. Then you have to take the reciept to the electricity board office. The office that covers the Battaramulla area is in Etul Kotte. Surely it costs more than 250 to process all this? There are three morons in the Etul Kotte office. Two of them are always out. The third spends his time reading the papers.

After giving the reciept, they visited the site and gave guidelines on how the fusebox should be fixed and wanted another piece of information from me. So I visited the office. The moron with the newspaper is there, so is another official but the only person who knows anything about this installation is out. So I ask my sister in law to take over. It takes two visits to get hold of him (no point in trying contact these imbeciles on the phone).

The electricity board staff make another visit to the site and informs the masons there that a payment has not been made yet. So they don't connect the site to the grid. Each truck has four morons, so how much money has it cost them for these two visits?

At no point in the process have we been asked to make a payment or presented with a bill. Another visit to the office by my sister in law follows. She is given an estimate, has to take it to the bank, make the payment and go back the electricity board office with the reciept. Then there is another form to fill up. That form has to be submitted in person by the application (that happens to be me). So I trudge to their office again and submit the form. Wonder what comes next.

The Ceylon Electriciy Board is one of the most corrupt and inefficient organizations in Sri Lanka (if not the whole world). No wonder we pay such a huge price for electricity even though most of it is hydro electrictity.

Posted by raditha at March 27, 2007 11:11 AM