PBAPP Bills Can't Be Paid At Post Office, Third-party Agencies From Next Year

GEORGE TOWN, Dec 19 (Bernama) -- The Penang Water Supply Corporation (PBAPP) announced that water bills can no longer be paid at the post office or through several third-party collection agencies starting from next year, following instructions from the National Water Services Commission (SPAN).

PBAPP chief executive officer Datuk K. Pathmanathan said that collection agencies such as Pos Malaysia, Paylink, MobilityOne and MBF will no longer accept payments for bills issued by PBAPP.

"PBAPP has collaborated with these bill collection agencies for years, and last year, four of these agencies collected commissions for a total of 836,444 Penang water bill transactions, which represents 27 per cent of the total recorded water bill payment transactions.

"The commission charges imposed the agencies range between RM0.40 and RM0.90 per transaction and the charges are collected independently and directly from Penang water consumers,” he said in a statement today.

He said that PBAPP never made a single cent from bill collection through third parties, adding that its relationship with the various collection agencies is solely for the convenience of Penang water users.

Pathmanathan said that as of February this year, SPAN had announced that Penang water consumers could not be imposed commission charges for bill collection directly, and that several PBAPP appeals had also been rejected, with SPAN saying that PBAPP would have to bear the commission costs if it wanted to allow water bill collection through third parties that charged commissions.

However, he said that Penang water users still have other options, such as myPBA mobile app, myPBA portal, JomPay Bill Code: 50385, Maybank2U and Easy Pay, or in person at nine customer service centres operated by PBAPP, to pay their water bills without any commission charges.

-- BERNAMA