The Hindu : New Delhi News : Discoms told to weed out contractors

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Wednesday, Jun 27, 2007
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New Delhi

Discoms told to weed out contractors

Smriti Kak Ramachandran

Relief for residents of illegal colonies

SPD contractors used to fleece consumers
Proper electricity meters to be installed

NEW DELHI: The Delhi Government has come to the rescue of the people living in the rehabilitation colonies and villages who have to buy electricity from single point delivery (SPD) contractors. As these consumers have been exploited by the contractors all the time, the Power Department has asked the distribution companies to pave the way for installation of electricity meters in the areas covered through the SPD system.

Directing the discoms to take action, the Power Department has set a time-frame for converting the SPD system into a regularised structure.

“People living in unauthorised areas or villages where the SPD contractors operate have been complaining of harassment. They are forced to pay more and their services are poor. The contractors often shut off their power supply for complaining to the Government. It is for these reasons that we have directed the discoms to cancel the contracts of these SPD contractors,” said Principal Secretary (Power) Rakesh Mehta.

“We have set a deadline for the discoms. They have been given time till the end of this financial year to install meters in all the households that have an SPD connection,” he said.

For their part, the discoms said they are willing to follow the Power Department’s instruction.

“There is unanimity on the issue of doing away with the SPD contractors. When we took over, we had more than 200 SPD contractors in our area, today the number has come down to less than 40. We are keen to help the consumers and are offering them electricity through regular means,” said a senior NDPL official.

The task of weeding out these contractors, he said, was difficult, but the discoms even went to the extent of seeking legal recourse.

“The idea behind the SPD contractors was to allow residents to manage the utility on a cooperative basis. They were allowed to choose their contractor, but things turned ugly and contractors began exploiting consumers. Also, these contracts drawn up at the time of the erstwhile Delhi Vidyut Board did not specify the time-frame for which the contractor could operate in a given area, we had to fight some of these contractors in the courtroom to get them evicted,” the official said.

BSES, which still has more than a hundred such contractors, also claims to have brought down their number in its area of operation.

“The distribution networks of the SPDs are in a very appalling condition. At the time of privatisation there were around 500 SPDs in the BSES area. They not only cheat consumers but also do not pass on the payments collected from customers as per the contract to BSES and steal electricity by bypassing the meters,” said BSES officials.

New connections

Both BSES and NDPL claim they are organising camps for providing new connections in SPD areas.

“So far we have electrified over 430 colonies – bringing over 2.4 lakh people into the billing net,” said BSES officials.

NDPL on the other hand is looking at consolidation of the areas that were previously run by the SPD contractors and is hoping to provide regularised connections in the rest.

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