Team Herald
panjim: On April 6, the President of the Goa State Industries Association (GSIA), Damodar Kochkar had met Chief Minister Pramod Sawant with a plea that there should be some “rationalisation” on the electricity bills being furnished to the industries. The meeting was informal but the letters of demand, which was presented to the CM, was also shared with Industry Minister Vishwajit Rane.
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Ratanakar Barve, Assistant Vice President of Finolex, Goa on this issue said that, “We have received the bill for the month of March and those fixed charges have already been levied for those ten days. We wanted the actual bill without the minimum demand charges as we did not use it as there was no production at all for ten days in March. Assurances are fine but something must be done in writing. We however welcome the postponement of the last date of payment from April 15 to May 15 but the actual bill demand needs to be reduced. We are willing to pay for whatever electricity we have used.” Bharve fears that it will be worse in the April bill as there were absolutely no production.
GSIA President Damodar Kochkar said, “The letter was sympathetically considered and was to the Chief Engineer of Electrical Department for his consideration in the first week of April. I have been sending letter to the Chief Minister and so far, nothing has been done.”
He added that the advisory from the Cente on Provident Fund is also not having any clarity as it said that those who are employing below 100 people will get the PF benefit for both the employee contribution and the employer contribution. “The problem is that there is a clause which says that the salary of 90 per cent of the people employed should be below Rs 15,000 per month. This is means many will not get the benefit. This is not fair,” said Kochkar.
Sources in the pharmaceutical industry added that, “Since the Electricity Department is government by the JERC norms and there is no written order by the government, we are still unclear what to do with the fixed charges and minimum payable amount etc. There is no notification. The only message we got is to defer our payment for a month. Last month bill issue was raised by us but let us see what kind of bill we will get this month.”
Vice President of the Verna Industries Association , Pradip Da Costa who is also a Director in Astra Metal Systems told Herald that, “Please charge us only for what electricity we consume. We are going through a very bad phase and every industry was closed. From the government side we should get some moratorium for the electricity, which we never used. Fixed charges should be removed for this period and that the least we would expect.”
