The video of a man visiting an office of the Kerala State Electricity Board (KSEB) in Kollam with sacks full of coins to pay some bills has gone viral. C Renjith, a Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) ward member from Thalavoor, Kollam, decided to give KSEB officials a tough time by paying them thousands of rupees in coins of different denominations, as a protest against the frequent power outages in his ward. The officials took hours to sort it out and count the money which included electricity bills of nine people in Renjith’s ward.
In a video shared by GCN News, Renjith says that he did not want to create trouble for the public by taking his protest to the roads – the form of protest most commonly adopted by protesting politicians. “It is the officials who give us a tough time by cutting our power so frequently that should be paid back in kind,” he says. The protest is also against increasing electricity tariffs, he adds.
He is also unhappy with the functioning of the Water Authority, the way pipes broke and water leaked all the time, he says. “I will pay all my bills in this manner. Not only mine, if the situation persists and we get so many power outages a day, I will collect bills of hundreds of people and pay it all with small change,” Renjith says.
The video also has visuals of Renjith counting the coins and packing them into various little sacks before taking the heavy baggage on his shoulders to the KSEB office in Pattazhy. The women officials there, taking the change from him, appear to have been reluctant to accept the payment at first. But on video, they don’t protest much when Renjith tells them there was no rule as to how the currency for the payment should be brought.
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