Riyaz Bhat
Srinagar, Jul 12 : The Power Development Department (PDD) said that it was receiving timely bills of electricity from only 25-30 percent of consumers from the non-metered areas of Kashmir region.
Top officials of PDD informed the news agency—Kashmir News Observer (KNO) that “Out of the total amount of electricity bill generated monthly in the non-metered areas, KPDCL is receiving timely bills of only 25-30 percent of consumers.”
The official said that non-payment of electricity bills was one of the reasons for power curtailments. “We have to pay to buy the power from other producers especially in winters.”
The official further said that even though the Aggregate Technical and Commercial (AT&C) loss in Jammu and Kashmir has reduced by nearly 10 percent, PDD was still topping the list in AT&C in India.
“As of now only 32 percent of residential areas have meters and 68 percent are almost on flat rates in KPDCL areas. There is no check and balance on those consumers residing in non-metered areas. Wherever we have not installed meters yet, billing is done on load basis,” the official said.
He further said, “In the non-metered areas, we are charging bills of a maximum use of one Kilowatt while we have observed that thousands of consumers are consuming nearly five Kilowatts. That is one of the main reasons the government is losing a huge amount of money because there are no meters.”
“Problem is with the residential consumers and especially in the Kashmir region. Feeder wise losses are very high. In some feeders losses are as high as 70-80 percent,” he said adding that in KPDCL areas, many small scale shopkeepers were using the residential connection for the commercial purposes.
The official added, “All the hue and cry happening in the Kashmir region is because we started calibrating the load on the inputs of energy being consumed by the consumers.”—(KNO)
