The number of electricity and water emergencies reported during Ramadan in Bahrain fell by 58 per cent and 32 per cent respectively compared with last year, according to latest statistics.

The call centre received during Ramadan 5,282 reports of electricity emergencies compared with 12,603 last Ramadan while the number of water emergencies fell to 1,270 from 1,876, reported the Gulf Daily News, our sister publication.

Ministry of State for Electricity and Water Affairs Dr Abdulhussain Mirza explained that preparatory measures such as increasing the number of employees to 75 were taken during Ramadan to provide the maximum level of services to citizens.

"The ministry has executed several measures to reduce the number of disruptions and their duration.

"The most important of these issues, was to improve the communication with the subscribers through the call centre of the Electricity and Water Authority to provide them with information on the work developments in repairing the defects and the time of returning the service after the interruption."

He pointed out that the main call centre of the authority provides 40 telephone lines for communication on a unified number  and 10 telephone lines on a toll-free number, allocated for reporting water leakages in the streets and street lighting emergencies.

The call centre provides services 24 hours a day, seven days a week in both Arabic and English with a new Indian language line launched in May this year.

It also started the Call Me Back service in March for ensuring that the problems are solved for customers.

The minister highlighted that the centre managed to respond in less than 20 seconds to more than 80 per cent of the phone calls even at the peak periods.

Moreover, it has emerged that the overall performance ratio has also improved in reducing the average duration of outages over the last three months.

The minister also said that an SMS text messaging system has been launched to inform the citizens on the progress of the work course in repairing the defects through the call centre.

Departments responsible for the operations of the electric grid are continuously monitoring the condition of the weather in summer, for it has a direct relation with the amounts of electricity consumption, which in turn has a direct reflection on the maximum load recorded by the grid, Dr Mirza said. – TradeArabia News Service