The last couple of weeks have seen Malaysians bitching about high electricity bills. And that annoyance got dialled up several notches last week when it suddenly seemed that only a further payment of RM5 would guarantee a shot at fairness. 

The problem with soaring bills was that there’d been no physical electricity meter readings for three months, from the start of the Movement Control Order. And when they did resume, domestic consumers were greeted with insane spikes in both their bacaan anggaran (estimated readings) and bacaan sebenar (actual readings) totals.

Now, the logical answer is that three months of unpaid bills would most definitely have resulted in high accumulated tallies. Also, since most everyone had been forced to duduk rumah for the duration of the MCO, it’s a given that domestic electricity consumption would’ve increased – which it did. Still, many felt hard done by, with most pointing fingers at TNB’s billing system.

You can get the full explanation here, but in a nutshell, TNB’s billing system employs different tariff blocks, with charges calculated differently the more you consume. However, to prevent from consumers having to fork out loads simply because their three-month consumption burst the various tier limits, what TNB actually did was divide the accumulated tallies into monthly amounts. 

Imagine it this way: say your usage was 1,400kWh over four months. Well, based on the tariff blocks, that figure would result in you having to part with RM681. With the prorated method, though, you only kena RM411.20, or RM102.80 per month.

Now, the mechanism is not perfect, and the powers that be have said that they will review the system further. However, at least as far as the three of our electricity bills go, we found that the accumulated totals had been prorated accurately. Yeah, we used more power over the lockdown – who didn’t? – but overall, and as much as it pains us to say, the calculations were correct. 

Anyhoo, regardless of that explanation and despite the TNB’s insistence that the charges were all above board, bulk concessions – which translate to free power from April to June (if your usage is under 300kWh or RM77 a month) or reductions of RM77 per month for that period if you used more than 3000kWh – were announced on Saturday. And things immediately blew up on social media.

Now, first things first, we wanna say that we’re all for discounts. And like us, there were many others who welcomed the government’s move.

Curiously, though, there were also, as activist Fahmi Reza pointed out, a whole bunch of “people” who decided to praise the gomen while appearing to quote from pre-written scripts. And funnily, some of these “users” couldn’t be sure whether it was 7.66 million people who’d be benefiting from the government’s move or if Perikatan Nasional was forking out RM7.66 million.🤣

Also, adding to action on social media were former Pakatan minister Yeo Bee Yin and dear ol’ Najib Razak, who both took to claiming that consumers were now able to reap benefits simply because of measures their respective governments had put in place. It was really quite unnecessary, if we’re being honest. But hey, whatever gets you added brownie points, eh?

In any event, when she wasn’t battling Jib, Yeo did succeed in putting forth some valid points too, like for example, how discounts should also be extended to industrial users as well as how more energy savings could be enjoyed due to global energy costs having declined. And truthfully, these things should be looked at. But of course, whether they are, and whether Bossku has anything else to add is left to be seen.

P.S. TNB supplies power to Peninsular Malaysia only, not Sabah and Sarawak, so the tariff block system as well as the announced discounts don’t apply to consumers there. Nevertheless, there’ve been calls to extend to bulk discounts to folks from East Malaysia, and we have to say, we agree. We are one country after all, are we not?