The Director General of Etihad Water and Electricity, Mohammad Mohammad Saleh, confirmed that three categories are exempted from cutting off electricity and water services in case they are late in payment or bills have accumulated on them. The aforementioned categories include social affairs cards holders, senior citizens and people of determination and some health conditions who submit requests accompanied by the necessary medical reports.

He explained that care is taken to communicate with the three groups on a monthly basis in the event of non-payment to clarify the position of their accounts, pointing out that this exception is conditional on the number of three invoices or a total of arrears amounting to a maximum of 5000 dirhams.

He said that Etihad Water and Electricity provides a facility to pay the accumulated bills according to specific conditions. If a consumer meets the conditions and wants to pay the bills in installments, he may visit the website and submits a request for installments, where the case is studied and the consumer is granted this advantage under the supervision of the Director of the Customer Happiness Department in the concerned area.

He explained that Etihad Water and Electricity launched the second phase of the smart meters project in the northern emirates, which focuses on linking the smart meters that have been installed to the system, provided that their readings are taken automatically without any human intervention, pointing out that not less than 10% of the total meters on the network will be linked before the end of 2022.

He Said that Etihad Water and Electricity has installed 500,000 smart meters in the Northern Emirates, representing 70% of the total number of meters. The smart meters project targets all accounts registered on the EtihadWE network. New accounts are automatically launched with this type of meters, while work is being done on traditional meters in a phased manner with the aim of reaching a complete smart meter network by 2026.

He added that the smart meters will allow the consumer himself to control his consumption pattern, and thus rationing it, in addition to new features that will be activated successively with the progress in the implementation of the project.