TimesView Bill payment kiosks are meant to aid consumers, not compound their woes. The inability of the machines to recognise new notes defeats the whole purpose of citizen-centric services. The least the authorities can do is put up information boards so that customers don’t have to waste time in making futile attempts at paying their bills. Though the water board’s concerns about fake currency are genuine, it should ensure the machines are recalibrated at the earliest to spare citizens misery. A positive spin-off is that it may motivate some consumers to use online payment channels, but this doesn’t mean the board shouldn’t fix the problem quickly. BENGALURU: Insert the new Rs 10, 50 and 200 currency notes into a bill payment machine at a BWSSB kiosk and it will reject them. This is a problem many BWSSB consumers are facing across the city as payment machines are yet to be recalibrated to recognize and accept the new notes.However, the system accepts new notes of Rs 2,000 and Rs 500 denominations. Madhusudhan G, a resident of Basavanagudi faced the glitch while trying to pay his water bill on Friday morning at a BWSSB kiosk in Krishna Rao Park. The new Rs 10 note was not accepted by the system. “A payment of Rs 13 is pending from my side, which will be added to the next bill,” he said.Even Sumathi Ramachandra faced a similar experience when she tried to insert a new Rs 50 note in the machine on Mount Joy Road near Hanumanthnagar. “Why has the system not been updated? I had to exchange the note for an old one at a nearby shop and pay the bill,” she complained.BWSSB has 74 kiosks in Bengaluru where bill payment can be done. However, none of the machines is accepting the new Rs 10, 50 and 200 notes. The kiosks operate for 12 hours, usually from 7.30am to 7.30pm. Besides, no board has been put up to inform customers about the new notes not being accepted. “Why can’t we be informed? Why do we have to insert the new notes to find out,” asked Sumathi.An operator at the Basavanagudi kiosk — BWSSB has outsourced the job of bill collection — said the machines would be updated once the new Rs 100 notes are out. However, BWSSB said they are awaiting RBI guidelines. “There’s a process of identifying fake notes. There are chances of fake notes getting into circulation and the machine should be able to identify them. Hence, our vendors who run the kiosks have written to RBI and are waiting for certain guidelines. The machines will soon accept new notes as well,” said VB Maheshwarappa, executive engineer, revenue billing and information technology, BWSSB.When the new Rs 500 and Rs 2,000 notes were released a year ago, the machines were recalibrated within a month, claimed the water board.Machine operators say they are at the receiving end every time there’s a power cut. “Some of these machines are as old as 10 to14 years. They are slow. If there’s even a one-minute power cut, the machines take no less than half an hour to restart. Angry customers yell at us but we’re helpless,” said an operator.

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