More counters for phone bills

JAKARTA (JP): East Jakarta residents will no longer have to join the long queues at local major post offices to pay their telephone bills.

The management of the East Jakarta post office have provided 58 post offices and a number of mobile units in a bid to help accommodate the mayoralty's more than 80,000 phone customers.

Previously, people could pay their monthly bills at only six post offices in East Jakarta, Nursalim, head of the local post office, was quoted as saying on Sunday by Antara.

According to Nursalim, the six major post offices had become overburdened by the increase in the number of customers wanting to pay their telephone bills at post offices.

"These customers used to pay their bills at banks. As many banks were destroyed during the mid-May riot, people are now going to the post offices," he said.

"During the days when the phone bill payment deadline nears, the post offices teem with queues of customers, who have to wait for up to three hours to complete the task," Nursalim recalled.

Unlike the computerized system at the six major post offices, the new 58 counters would operate manually, he said.

Nursalim said that setting up a computer system at so many post offices would be impossible.

"The computers would cost Rp 76 million (US$7,200) each," he said.

"We, therefore, will charge Rp 2,000 per telephone number for customers who intend to pay their bills at the post offices using the manual system. The money is to pay our officials who will have to work overtime to put the details of the payment through the computers," he said. (ivy)