The trouble began on Tuesday morning when some subscribers of the Gorwa Exchange received recorded calls from the department cautioning them to pay their bills in two days or face disconnection. Interestingly, none of these subscribers have even received the `unpaid' bill.

Talking to Express Newsline, one such subscriber, requesting anonymity, said that more than 50 people with similar complaints had gathered at the Zilla Parishad office on Tuesday morning to collect their duplicate bills. ``However, the officials made us wait from 8.30 am to 4 pm and finally said that they could not supply us the bills today because of a computer system failure,'' he claimed.

He claimed that the gathered subscribers got agitated by the delay and literally pulled by the collar a senior accounts official of the DoT and mobbed him demanding an explanation. ``The official seemed to have no knowledge of the missing bills and remained adamant that the connections would be temporarily suspended for non-payment of bills,'' he alleged.

Agreeing that the duplicate bills could not be provided due to a system error, Chief Accounts Officer (TR) K Jha, however, said the DoT would reconsider these cases as ``the bills seem to have got lost in transit''.

``We think that there has been some disarrangement on the part of the postal department. So we will consider the cases before opting for disconnection. We have also made arrangements for a cheque payment facility for the subscribers concerned,'' he said.

Jha added that the subscribers could have shown more responsibility and collected their duplicate bills earlier ``as the DoT has constantly issued directions that if bills do not arrive on time due to some reason, the subscribers should collect duplicates from the department office''. He ruled out that the postal strike could have caused the delay ``as the bill was dated July 1 while the strike began only a week later''.

Jha said the matter would be taken up with the Director of Postal Services at the earliest and Gorwa Exchange subscribers given sufficient time to pay their bills.