Power, water OTS schemes a failure
SURAJ NANDREKAR
PANJIM, JUNE 19
The State government’s plan to recover hundreds of crores of rupees of water and power arrears through the one time settlement (OTS) scheme has failed to impress the consumers.
The State government had through the Electricity department and the Public Works Department announced the OTS schemes for the power and water consumers, respectively.
Under the scheme government extended very attractive benefit to the defaulting consumers envisaging recovery of only ‘Principle Amount’ by waiving all the delayed payment charges from the date of first default and also waiving 18 per cent interest chargeable in respect of RRC cases.
However, very few consumers took benefit of the scheme. As a result, the Department of Electricity had to extend the OTS period by enhancing the maximum limit of outstanding arrears from Rs 20,000 to Rs 50,000 which is valid upto August 2010, while the PWD closed down the scheme last September due to lack of response.
While the Electricity Department is struggling to recover Rs 150 crore in form of arrears, the PWD too has arrears worth around Rs 10 crore.
Out of the thousands of water consumers who are eligible for the scheme, only around 200 consumers took benefit of the same.
“We had to close down the scheme as the response was very poor from the consumers,” PWD Principal Chief Engineer A M Wacasunder told Herald.
He however felt that the result for the poor response was the slab limit of Rs 20,000.
“Only customers whose arrears are below Rs 20,000 could take advantage of the scheme and I feel that was one of the reasons (for the poor response),” he stated.
Asked whether the scheme would be restarted, he replied, it has to be by the government.
In the Electricity Department too there are thousands of eligible cases with crores of rupees in arrears, but sadly only around 500 consumers have applied and their cases have been settled.
The Officer on Special Duty (OSD) for the Power OTS scheme, Suresh Shanbhogue, told Herald that the department’s sub-divisions have made sincere efforts to create awareness about the scheme by sending letters to individual defaulting consumers and panchayats and also by publishing the same as news.
“All the mamltadars through the respective collectors have been requested to inform all the RRC cases to avail the benefit of the scheme,” he said.
“About 500 to 600 consumers so far have availed the benefit of the scheme and the amount recovered is some lakhs of rupees,” he said.
Shanbhogue further said that there were some genuine problems in locating the defaulting consumers.
“Many defaulting cases are very old and their addresses are not traceable. In many cases the letters sent were returned as the addressees were not found,” he said adding, despite the best “efforts by the department of electricity, there isn’t much response from the defaulting consumers.”
It is pertinent to note here that the government has failed to make efforts to further popularize the scheme.
