Kathmandu, June 4

After facing some major technical glitches, Nepal Electricity Authority (NEA) has postponed the date to launch its mobile application to Sunday.

Earlier, it was scheduled to launch the application last Tuesday.

Anil Shrestha, technical director at NEA, said they faced some cyber threats from hackers who claimed they could hack into the app and other data, so it will take some extra time to formally launch the app.

“Earlier, we faced multiple attacks on our system, so though the app has to be user-friendly we also need to make sure that it cannot be hacked easily,” he added.

On April 15, some hackers had threatened to hack into NEA's electricity bills payment system, load dispatch centre and revenue system. “So, we are going to implement some newer versions of cyber precautionary measures so that hackers cannot access our servers,” Shrestha said.

He further said the authority has developed a mobile application whereby any customer can read the electricity meter installed at their house and pay their bill online.

This new initiative has been developed by the power utility as NEA meter readers have not been able to visit customers’ houses due to the fear of the coronavirus infection spreading and the nationwide lockdown in place.

READ ALSO: Nepal Electricity Authority to launch mobile app on Tuesday

A version of this article appears in e-paper on June 5, 2020, of The Himalayan Times.