For all of the people who complain about the electricity costs here.

This is an example of the additional effort the electrical utilities here in the Philippines have to make verses first world countries. Here in the Philippines there is electrical service distributed throughout rural areas. The runs are long with very few consumers who consume very little electricity. Electrical utilities in the first world have a much better economy of scale.

Watch this video to see how far the meter reader has to walk to read the meters of only 12 consumers. The lack of economy of scale greatly increases the cost. This is in addition to not having local fuel sources for the power plants.

 

In the UK I sent in my own meter reading - only to be checked in person annually or if I moved out. What are the problems doing that here?

 

The same problems as with countless other examples of too many people being employed in shops, government offices, banks, etc. etc.
The automation efforts of basic business processes are next to non-existent. The reason for that is also simple: labour is too cheap here, so there's hardly an incentive to automate.
On the other side, if all those processes would magically be automated tomorrow, unemployment would jump from the current 12% to at least 40% overnight (my wild estimate).

 

That, along with the inability to set up any system capable of doing the job, are probably the reasons. So perhaps they should not crow about an employee doing something arduous so that he has a job.

 

You are correct in many cases. Why pay the cost of automation when the cost of labor is cheaper?

On the other hand, new electrical meters have a wireless zigbee chip in them. With this they communicate through each other in a mesh network. The message hops from device to device. In some cases they can communicate via hops all the way back to the central office. Usually their is a point where the meter reader goes and collects the messages wirelessly there.

It will be awhile before all of the old meters are replaced with new ones.

 

Yeah - I have noticed some differences in how people here operate! They can always go to @Crystalhead for a loan.

 

Automation would probably cut out 90% of the corruption in government and no one wants that to happen..