Chief Secretary directs officials to achieve 7 pc reduction in AT&C losses in current year
Bhubaneswar: In a bid to ensure power supply to each village, the state government has decided to provide power supply to all un-electrified villages by the end of this year, energy secretary Hemant Sharma said here Monday.
A DPR was prepared to electrify 3,474 un-electrified villages in 2014-15 out of which 3,150 have so far received power supply. The remaining 324 villages would get power by the end of December this year, Sharma told reporters after attending a review meeting with Chief Secretary AP Padhi.
“Last year, Orissa was the top state in India for providing power connections to 1,200 villages out of 2,000 villages across India,” Sharma said.
As per 2011 Census, the total number of households in the state were 96 lakh, out of this more than 68 lakh houses have been electrified. About 3.18 lakh houses were provided new connections during 2016-17 while 1,21,310 new households were provided connections during this year (by end of July). A target was set to provide power supply to the balance 28 lakh houses by next March.
After achieving 5 per cent reduction in Aggregate Technical & Commercial (AT &C) loss during 2016-17, the state government has targeted to reduce it by another 7 per cent in the current year.
According to sources, the total AT&C loss in LT system was around 51.57 per cent in 2015-16, which dropped to 46.45 per cent in 2016-17. The loss reduction during first four months has been more than 1.5 per cent compared to the corresponding period last year. Padhi asked the distribution companies (discoms) to meet the target.
The state government has also taken various measures to streamline power supply system and billing and collections. Billing agencies are being engaged through a tender process. A performance-based incentive system has also been introduced in various divisions because of which billing and collection has shown better results, the energy secretary said.
An online mobile phone photo-based billing system has been introduced under three discoms namely NESCO, WESCO and SOUTHCO. Handset based spot billing system was made functional in CESU area before that. Post offices have been roped in for receiving payments against power bills while point of sale (POS) machines installed in counters of all discoms.
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