Industrialists are seething with anger over the imposition of power holiday once a week apart from Sundays and on two working days from Thursday.
What has shocked many is the fact that power cuts are imposed regularly throughout the year on some pretext or other for the industrial consumers of AP Eastern Power Distribution Company of AP Ltd. APEPDCL is the best performing discom in terms of revenue collection and minimal transmission losses.
The Visakhapatnam region is having one of the best performances among all power transmission companies in the country. The region has the lowest transmission and distribution losses in the State at less than 7 per cent – one of the lowest in the country. Around 93 per cent of the entire power received is billed to consumers whereas there are many defaulters in other discoms.
“Our region is the only area in our country where the bill collection and realisation is almost 100 per cent of the entire power billed and supplied. We are facing power cuts regularly despite paying more. We are also paying more for the losses suffered by others,” Symbiosys Technologies CEO Naresh Kumar told The Hindu on Saturday.
He said the industrialisation and other welfare measures would receive a setback if they were subjected to power cuts this way and appealed to elected representatives to convince Chief Minster N. Kiran Kumar Reddy to exempt them to realise more and fund welfare measures.
He said it was unfortunate that IT units in the Special Economic Zone, Rushikonda were now being subjected to unscheduled power cuts in two to three spells a day though they were exempted.
“I can't imagine what the situation will be in summer going by the power cuts being imposed in winter and monsoon,” wondered Ramakrishna Narappareddy, president, Visakha Autonagar Small Scale Industrialists' Welfare Association. The peak hour load restriction was removed for small and medium industries following protest at the APEPDCL office on Friday but the frequency of power holiday would go up from one to two a week from Thursday, he regretted.
