Air Selangor gets an ‘E’ among privatised essential services

 

The other day I had my water supply cut - without any warning. No bills, no notice despite claims by the utility that they had sent it.

There are three important essential services that I can think of - water, electricity and communications. Take any of them away at any point and what you have is extreme deprivation.

Okay, mistakes happen, right? I called Air Selangor - it will be restored in 24 hours they said after bill payment. But can I complain first about not getting notices. We send our bills every two months, they said, but I have not got them, I said.

We issued notices that we were going to cut the water supply, they said, but I did not get them, I replied. Did you tell us that you did not get the bills, they said - it’s your responsibility to make sure that you send the bills and I get them, I said. I can’t pay your bills if you don’t send them to me, I added for good measure.

You have my phone number and my email address, why did you not send me the bill, the notice to terminate, etc, to these, I asked. This was the first call. By the time of the second call, I had made my payment online. Air Selangor confirmed that payment had been made.

I want to make a complaint against Air Selangor, I said in the second call. This is most unfair - you have cut my water supply and it is not my fault, I said. Why would I not pay my bill if you gave me notice that you are going to cut the supply and I received it.

The stunning reply from Air Selangor’s representative was, no sir, you can’t make a complaint until your water supply is reconnected. But I have paid my bill, I fumed. Why can’t I make a complaint after I have paid my bill? No, you can’t, wait until your water is reconnected.

How deviously clever of them! After the relief of a return of water supply, how many people would still complain? I made a mental note to myself that I was not going to be among that crowd - I will complain nevertheless, loud and clear.

I said, your guy who comes to cut the water supply - I was there when he did that dastardly, unwarranted act. He had to come into my compound to do that. Why could he not have told me? He only had to ring the doorbell. I could have made payment on the spot and there would be no need to cut the water supply.

Why did Air Selangor not complain about the postal problems, I asked? I don’t recall getting any bills from Air Selangor for the whole of this year - there should have been two or three bills already. I got my credit card bills and other postal notifications, although late almost all of the time. Silence on the other side.

Oh, we have an app - an Air Selangor app which you can register yourself on, they said. I replied that I already have too many apps on the phone, I don’t want another. Besides I like to have a physical record of my bills, I said. Is this a way of forcing us to get the app? No, no, they said. They swore they sent the bills and the termination notice. But how come I did not get it?

Next complaint

Which brings us up to the next complaint - the other privatised service, Pos Malaysia, of course - yet another crony. Gone are the days when the post was delivered in a day or two when it was under the government. Now if you get it in two weeks you are lucky!

The horrendous result from all these - you got your credit card bills, amongst others, late. So, you ended up paying late charges and hefty interest rates to credit card companies or spending time on the phone explaining why you paid late.

Did the credit card companies complain to Pos Malaysia? Again, silence on the other end.

We can send your bill by email or you can view it through our app, they said. That app again. I said can you send both the physical bill through the post and the bill through email? CIMB said no, it has to be either one, Citibank said yes. Guess who I use for most of my credit card transactions these days.

Speaking of communications, I use Maxis for my telecommunications. I pay almost RM300 per month for an 800 Mbps service but I never get 800 Mbps anywhere in the house despite having installed three mesh devices to improve connectivity. Even if I am sitting in front of the router, I get only about 600 Mbps.

They have never been unable to sort this problem out, and I am told other services have similar problems. But whenever I have a problem, they are quick to come over to attend to it. I have to say the WiFi service sucks with frequent drops and slower speeds than promised.

But TM is reputedly worse. I had an experience with them before when I first tried to switch to fibre from ye olde copper. I went for TM’s Unifi but the contractors charged an exorbitant RM800 to pull fibre into my house despite an assurance from TM it would be no more than RM200. Maxis did it for RM200 and I have been with them ever since.

And then the mobile service. Let’s face it. There’s a cartel out there among the three major providers - Maxis, Celcom and Digi - with more or less uniformly poor service with high rates. Dropped calls are plenty and reception is bad. The 4G services are bursting at the seams, it seems but they all want to milk it for the maximum.

Will 5G implementation sort the problem out? And bring about uniformly high service levels, better reception and access? God alone knows with opinion divided between at least two services and just one with the telcos, that’s telecommunication companies, being clients of the main utility provider.

Impeccable service

Finally, a word on electricity. I have never had my electricity cut by Tenaga Nasional Bhd or TNB. They give tonnes of warnings and I get all their bills and warning notices. How? Now pay close attention, Air Selangor.

They have meter readers, just like Air Selangor. But unlike Air Selangor, the TNB meter readers who come to the various homes generate the bills immediately after the reading and put them in your post box.

Now, why can’t Air Selangor do that instead of posting the bills later? I would just have to put that down to crony inefficiency. You see, TNB was corporatised, among the first of government departments-to-be, to institutional shareholders largely and the public.

This was unlike Air Selangor which was privatised to an individual - that made all the difference. Ever heard of water cuts when the government ran the waterworks?

TNB’s services record over the decades has been impeccable, except for the debacle in the 90s when power generation was privatised to cronies through independent power producers. There is a whole history behind that which we shall not get into here.

Air Selangor is among the worst water providers in Malaysia. Wastage rates have been as high as 40 percent due to old water pipes not being replaced, and there are frequent water outages in a country where rainfall is plentiful. Their cutting of supply at the drop of a hat causes major problems and further erodes their image.

The table above gives a rough and ready rating of the various providers of essential services based on what I have written here. Those who lag way behind should really sit up and take notice, as well as the relevant authorities and commissions who oversee these services.

There has been a rapid and steady deterioration in essential services in Malaysia which has to be reversed - now - or we are going to pay a very high price in future. - Mkini

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P GUNASEGARAM, a former editor at online and print news publications, and head of equity research, is an independent writer and analyst.

The views expressed here are those of the author/contributor and do not necessarily represent the views of MMKtT.