The Joint Electricity Regulatory Commission (JERC) for the State of Goa and Union Territories has directed the Puducherry Electricity Department to put in place a grievance mechanism to hear the complaints and suggestions of consumers at the grass-root level.
Chairing a public hearing on the Business Plan of the Electricity department for the control period of 2016-19 here on Thursday, S.K. Chaturvedi, chairman of JERC asked the department to conduct grievance camps headed by a Superintending Engineer once in three months to hear the grievances and suggestions of consumers to create an atmosphere of confidence. The department should give in writing on the schedule for holding such meetings upto 2016, he said.
Mr. Chaturvedi also clarified that the public hearing was only to listen to the opinions and grievances of consumers on the Business plan. The tariff structure will be worked out only after the Business plan is approved, he said.
The Union Government has set a solar power generation capacity target of 1.65 lakh MW by 2021 and each State and UT has been given their targets for generation of solar power. Of the total target of 1.65 lakh MW around 1 lakh MW will be ground mounted such as solar parks while the rest will be from rooftops, he added.
Stakeholders at the meeting also brought to the notice of the JERC deficiency in various services like installation of meters, underground cables and transformers to check breakdowns. P. Raghupathy, president of the Rajiv Gandhi Human Rights Awareness Organisation said the department was also not showing any interest in collection of arrears. While power connections of ordinary consumers were disconnected due to non-payment of bills the Electricity Department had not initiated any steps to collect arrears from major industries who owed the government arrears to the tune of several crore.
The department was yet to collect arrears to the tune of Rs.115.90 crore from industries. Over one-third of meters installed in Revenue Divisions III and IV were also defective, he said. Stakeholders also pointed out that the transmission loss provided by the Electricity department for the current fiscal was on a higher scale in the UT as compared to neighbouring states.
K. Madhivanan, Superintending Engineer I said the department had initiated steps for replacement of mechanical and defective meters with electronic meters. As many as 91,000 meters will be replaced in the current fiscal and another 1,18,000 meters will be replaced during 2016-17. The department is planning on availing loan from Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) for upgrading and carrying out significant improvement in the transmission and distribution network with a long term goal to meet the increasing demand and to lower transmission and distribution losses, he said.
