Fund-hit local bodies in for a power shock

Telangana, Power Shock, Water Supply, Hyderabad

Hyderabad: The cash-strapped local bodies in Telangana are in for a power shock. The Energy department has warned them either to pay the power bills or face snapping of connections.

It may be recalled that the distribution companies had taken up fixing meters to the streetlights and motors of the water supply schemes in the panchayats from last month.

In the past, the bills were being issued on the basis of average consumption. The panchayats have not been paying the bills promptly and the distribution companies too did not insist.

However, as the arrears to the Discoms have been mounting year after year, the government decided to collect the bills promptly.

According to estimations, the arrears would be about Rs 500 to Rs 600 crore. So far, the dues were being deducted from the grants the Centre gives to the states for gram panchayats (GPs).

In order to overcome this problem, the government directed all the GPs to make prompt payments to the Discoms for the power utilised for the streetlights and the motors of water supply schemes.

From this month onwards, the number of units of power consumed by each GP would be calculated and the bills would be delivered.

The sarpanches have to pay them by the stipulated time. In many villages, streetlights are also on during the daytime resulting in high consumption of power.

Hence, it has been decided to install on-off switches for streetlights. With the switches, streetlights would be operated from dusk to dawn thus wastage of power can be reduced.

But the Panchayat officials said that since the government stopped releasing funds, payment of power bills will be another tough task for the local bodies.