Irbid water subscribers can use WhatsApp to send water meter readings, receive bills

AMMAN — Water subscribers in central Irbid can now use mobile messaging app WhatsApp to send readings of their water meters and receive bills via their mobile phones.

The Ministry of Water and Irrigation announced the new service on Saturday, indicating that it will be available initially for the subscribers of central Irbid and will be duplicated in later stages across the country. 

The service is available for the 90,000 Irbid water subscribers, according to Water Minister Hazem Nasser. 

He noted in a statement e-mailed to The Jordan Times that the service is aimed at eliminating any inconvenience associated with waiting for a meter reader in order to receive the bill, while at the same time reducing expenditure incurred by the water sector.

The new service entails taking a photo of the water meter and its number and using WhatsApp to send the photo of the meter as well as a recent water bill to the company’s subscribers’ centre, which will in turn process the data, issue a new water bill and then send it back to the subscriber’s mobile phone via the messaging application.

Nasser noted that the service also seeks to expedite and facilitate the water billing and paying process, regardless of the weather conditions or the fact that subscribers can be unavailable when the time for water meter reading arrives, which leads eventually to accumulating unpaid water bills that currently amount to JD8 million in central Irbid alone.

Water meter readers will no longer visit houses to read the meters and issue the bills as the new service is applied, according to an official at the ministry, who said that the water company will dispatch meter readers for random inspections to prevent manipulation.