Where efficiency is concerned the State’s Electricity department is perhaps the one government department that displays the least of it. People in rural areas accept voltage fluctuations, power cuts and outages as a way of life, but now the urban areas are also being hit by the same problems quite regularly. When underground cables replaced overhead wires in some parts of Goa it was expected that the sudden power outages, caused by branches of trees falling on overhead wires, would stop. They reduced, but didn’t stop simply because road digging for other purposes ends up snapping power cables.
On the day Chief Minister Laxmikant Parsekar presented his maiden budget in the Legislative Assembly and announced that the allocation to the power department would be increased to Rs 651 crore from Rs 244 crore, there was a massive power outage in Panjim and its surrounding areas that lasted for several hours. Residents of the State capital and the villages skirting it were unable to watch the early part of the chief minister’s speech live on television as there was no electricity to bring home the budget. Coincidentally the power that returned for a short while midway through the budget speech blinked out again at the moment the chief minister commended the budget to the House. And this was because road digging work had resulted in cutting an electric cable.
Two days later the former chief minister Digambar Kamat said in the Legislative Assembly that he would have to stop work on the laying of the sewerage pipeline in Margao, his constituency, if the digging associated with it continued in causing power breakdowns in the area. Residents of Panjim can take consolation that power outages, because of road digging, are not a phenomenon only in Panjim, but in Margao too.
The increased budgetary allocation to the department is meant to modernize electricity transmission and distribution infrastructure to make power available 24×7 to the State. Governments come and so do budgets and also promises, but some things, like the snapping of electricity cables, never change. The failure to provide uninterrupted power supply to the State, even to the capital city, is an old story in Goa. There are shut downs, there are outages, there are breakdowns and all these are unlikely to change in the near future, even as the Electricity department and the Join Electricity Regulatory Commission (JERC) are planning a tariff hike.
The Electricity department should first ensure that the supply is uninterrupted before considering an upward revision in the energy charges. The revision came in for some harsh criticism at a meeting with consumers who first demanded that the faulty material used, the late billing and the inaccurate bills be attended to. The number of people complaining of not receiving bills for months and then receiving a bill for an exorbitant amount is rising. There have been consumers who have received bills running into several thousands of rupees and have had to make repeated trips to the electricity department offices to get these corrected. Herald has carried many such complaints in its Citizen Herald page, but other than assurances that this will be looked into there has been little change on the ground.
The department also needs to look closely at the distribution losses in the State that have increased to 15 percent in 2014-15 from the 12.7 percent in 2012-13. Distribution losses are usually caused by power thefts and tackling these has to be taken seriously by the department. Fines imposed have to be collected immediately otherwise this will encourage others to tap into power transmission lines and draw power illegally. Fines from power thefts could also be a manner to increase the earnings of the government department, making it rely less on budgetary allocations and earnings from legal consumers of power.
Today energy drives every system in homes, offices and industry, and uninterrupted power supply would be welcome. But, before jacking up the tariff and making promises of uninterrupted power supply, which it won’t easily be able to keep, the government may need to review the functioning of the electricity department and solve some of the basic problems that plague the directorate’s working. An efficiently working department will inevitably give the consumers a better supply of electricity.
