B P Samantray
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Bhubaneswar, 8th Dec 2016: Odisha Government has asked power discomsto bring down the aggregate technical & commercial loss (AT & C) loss to 30%, the target set earlier for the year 2016-17. As of now the trend showed an overall reduction to the level 34% during the current year. Besides, issues relating to 100% billing, 100% collection, raising satisfaction level of the consumers through quality power supply and timely delivery of services are the priorities laid by the Government for discoms.
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Chief Secretary Aditya Prasad Padhi directed the DISCOMs to first track replacement of the defective meters and enforcement activities through squad checks and disconnection for bringing down the theft and bypassing etc. They were also advised to improve their cash balance situation by enhancing collection efficiency.
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With regard to improvement in billing system, mobile-phone-photo based spot billing system has been implemented in 3 DISCOM areas like NESCO, WESCO and SOUTHCO. Earlier CESU has upgraded its billing system with spot billing handsets. Now the steps are being to further upgrade that to mobile photo based spot billing system. Old and poor performing billing agencies have been replaced with new effective agencies. New contracts with provisions of penalty for wrong billing and incentive for 100% accurate billing have been put in place.
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CMD GRIDCO Hemant Sharma mentioned that system has been developed to provide hassle-free new connection to domestic consumers within 48 hours at their door step. E-biz application has been rolled out for providing new service connections to industrial consumers under ease of doing business guidelines.
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“Presently monthly collection camp is being held in each village. Post offices, SHGs, Subidhaa Kendra have been engaged as collection partners. Several online payment options like net-banking, prepaid-wallet have been functionalized with the partners like Paytm, Billdesk, ATOM, ITZ Cash and CSC etc. Now efforts are being made to discontinue manual receipt system and promote e-transaction. More than 10 numbers of squads have been constituted in each Division to scale up the enforcement activities. CESU has awarded 15 divisions out of its total 20 divisions through input based franchisee,” Sharma added.
