The outstanding household electricity bill in Peninsular Malaysia under Tenaga Nasional Berhad (TNB) has been rising sharply since October 2021. This problem requires targeted financial support from the federal government.

It is safe to say that Malaysian households would have exhausted their financial savings to clear their respective outstanding electricity bills accumulated during Lockdown 1.0 from 18 March’2020 to 3 May 2020.

Source: Tenaga Nasional Berhad (May 2021)

However, the outstanding electricity bill for domestic households has been growing steadily from RM1.39 billion in September 2020 to RM1.62 billion in March 2021¹.

Besides that, the overall outstanding TNB bill for more than 5 months has been rising exponentially.

The figure from TNB is underquoted as many serviced apartments on commercial land are billed as low voltage commercial tariffs and reported as commercial sector users².

This extremely worrying trend which reflects the dire state of certain household in Peninsular Malaysia under the Covid-19 induced economic recession.

The Ministry of Energy and Natural Resources (KeTSA) needs to deal with this matter immediately by:

1. Switching all service apartments from commercial tariffs to domestic tariffs.
2. Utilise TNB profits worth RM3.6 billion to relinquish TNB bills for zero-income households.

TNB has been charging disproportionally higher bills for service apartments under low voltage commercial tariffs compared to other residential homes³.

Thus, KeTSA needs to instruct TNB to automatically switch service apartments from commercial tariff rates to domestic (residential) tariff rates and recalculate their electricity bill since March 2020.

Between January 2020 and March 2021, TNB had made a net profit worth RM4.55 billion putting TNB in a solid financial position to relinquish electricity bills for zero-income households ^{4 5}.

TNB’s wealth was accumulated from the blood and sweat of the people. Thus, the profit needs to be diverted to help zero-income households ease their financial pressure.

SHARAN RAJ
Central Committee
Parti Sosialis Malaysia (PSM)
&
State Secretary
Parti Sosialis Malaysia Negeri Melaka (PSM Melaka)

1 https://www.tnb.com.my/assets/quarterly_results/Analyst_Briefing_1QFY2021-2.pdf Appendix 19 (Pg 34)

2 https://www.imoney.my/articles/investing-serviced-apartment

3 https://www.tnb.com.my/commercial-industrial/pricing-tariffs1/

4https://www.nst.com.my/business/2021/02/669270/tnbs-q4-profit-soars-full-year-profit-slips

5 https://www.thestar.com.my/business/business-news/2021/05/27/tnb-q1-net-profit-rises-to-rm9587mil