The Hindu : Tamil Nadu / Chennai News : State seeks more time to study unbundling of Electricity Board

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Friday, Aug 25, 2006

Tamil Nadu

Tamil Nadu - Chennai

State seeks more time to study unbundling of Electricity Board

Special Correspondent

Willing to implement Act after Kerala does it: Veerasamy

CHENNAI: Electricity Minister Arcot N. Veerasamy informed the Assembly on Thursday that the State Government had sought more time to study the question of unbundling the Electricity Board.

Answering a question from E.S.S. Raman (Congress) during question hour, Mr. Veerasamy said when he had accompanied the Chief Minister to New Delhi recently, Union Power Minister Sushil Kumar Shinde had spoken to him about the 2003 Electricity Act and the need for creating separate entities for generation, transmission and distribution. He also told him that many States had accepted the proposal.

Mr. Veerasamy said the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam Government had written to the Centre stating that if unbundling were done now, there would be confusion among the workers.

It had sought six months to study the issue. The letter also stated that Tamil Nadu was willing to implement the Act after Kerala did it.

On a question from V. Sivapunniyam (CPI), the Minister said the State was not guided by World Bank diktats.

Mr. Veerasamy said only a minuscule percentage of hamlets lacked electricity connections in the State. Drawing power lines into these remote villages was a costly affair. The issue had been discussed with the Ministry of Non-Conventional Energy Sources, which had agreed to foot the bill for providing solar power to 94 of the 200 identified hamlets this year. The remaining would get solar power next year.

Bill introduced

Labour Minister T.M. Anbarasan introduced a Bill to amend the Tamil Nadu Manual Workers (Regulation of Employment and Conditions of Work) Act, 1982. The Government intends to omit sub-section (4) of Section 6 of the Act which provides that "members representing employers and manual workers shall be equal in number, and the members representing the Government shall not exceed one third of the total number of members representing employers and manual workers." This was because there was no employer-employee relationship since the manual workers are mostly self-employed.

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