The Electricity Supply Corporation of Malawi (Escom) Tuesday switched off its billing system and the service is expected to resume tomorrow [Thursday] at 6pm.
\nAccording to a statement from Escom, this is part of the corporation\u2019s ongoing project to migrate to a new system, Management Information System (MIS), which seeks to enhance customer service delivery.
\nEscom Director of Distribution and Customer Services, Alfred Kaponda, said the MIS will replace business systems, currently being used at Escom.
\nHe said following the migration process, prepaid vending and postpaid billing would be switched off and no service would be available until Thursday.
\n\u201cAll prepaid customers are being advised to buy prepaid electricity units sufficient to take them through the period when the services will not be available,\u201d Kaponda said.
\nHe further said the new system will help digitise Escom systems countrywide.
\n\u201cThe system will intergrate all the business processes into a single point of reference and management, and ensure that the organisation\u2019s business processes and information systems are well aligned to industry best practice for enhanced customer service, experience and improved service delivery,\u201d Kaponda said.
\nEscom ac t i ng Financ i a l Controller (Revenue), Wenceslas Chigwenembe, said after January 18, customers that have meters with seven digits will only be able to purchase units through customer service centres and Magetsi scratch cards.
\n\u201cCustomers that have meters with 11 digits will be able to use all the other channels of purchasing units, whether online bank systems or mobile money systems, while those with meters that have seven digits will have to purchase their units only through the two channels; customers service centres and Magetsi scratch cards until their meters have been replaced,\u201d Chigwenembe said.
\nEscom says benefits of the new system include immediate update of bill payments, and introduction of new bill payment channels such as a direct debit facility, where customers can give authorisation to commercial banks to deduct bill payments directly from their bank accounts.
\nThe benefits also include receiving and sending bill information electronically through SMS, email and web portal<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Electricity Supply Corporation of Malawi (Escom) Tuesday switched off its billing system and the service is expected to resume tomorrow [Thursday] at 6pm. According to a statement from Escom, this is part of the corporation\u2019s ongoing project to migrate to a new system, Management Information System (MIS), which seeks to enhance customer service delivery. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":56639,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-59182","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59182","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=59182"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59182\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":59185,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59182\/revisions\/59185"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/56639"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=59182"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=59182"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=59182"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}