Braving incessant rain and flooded roads, a sizable number of the city’s residents turned up at a public hearing here on Friday to register their protest against the proposed power tariff hike.
It was a clash of two world views, as those advocating an increase in the power bill considered electricity as a commodity that can vary in price based on the profit margin, while angry consumers held on to the view that power supply is a public good.
Several consumers criticised the State’s electricity utility, Tangedco, for its “mismanagement” and “unsound business practices,” which included buying power from private producers at expensive rates in violation of an order passed by the Tamil Nadu Electricity Regulatory Commission in 2012.
“The Neyveli thermal plant is able to sell power at Rs.2 per unit. But the Tangedco buys power from some private players who sell at Rs.12 and Rs.16 a unit,” said A.G. Kasinathan, District Secretary, CITU. “Why should consumers pay for this,” he asked.
He also pointed at the thousands of crores of rupees of arrears that the Tangedco has failed to collect and insisted that by taking action on those errant consumers and by curbing electricity theft, the need for a tariff hike could be avoided.
M. Thuyamurthy of the Association of Transparency and Anti-Corruption said that despite repeated and specific complaints about incidents of power theft, including those at apartment high-rises, no action has been taken. “What is the point of our representation,” he asked.
Industry voices such as Sanchit Makhija of Indus Towers Ltd., a telecom tower operator, said that the proposed hike would be violate the guidelines issued by the Electricity Appellate Tribunal and amount to a “tariff shock.”
“The cost of supplying power, according to the Tangedco , has increased only by five per cent. But, the proposed hike for commercial players like us is 20 per cent,” he said.
Even the few who said that they would consider the proposed hike said they could do so only if “uninterrupted power supply” is promised.
Murali Mohan, secretary, Maduranthakam Cooperative Sugar Mills in Padaalam, said that while multi-national companies and Special Economic Zones were enjoying round-the-clock power supply, farmers, already affected by persistent power cuts and drought for several years, are yet to come out from the tariff revision shock of 2012.
“It almost doubled the cost of electricity charges for the farmers who were increasingly facing difficulty in undertaking agricultural operations because of shortage of water,” he said, asking the TNERC members to postpone tariff hike by few more years.