| 9. Present
rules of power distribution are penalty oriented which is a root cause of corruption and
harassment. Penalties can be imposed by the statutory bodies only. UPPCL is a commercial
organization and may not be authorized to
levy any penalty. As such all powers of imposing penalty by the licensee may be withdrawn.
10. That during various discussion ,IIA had with
Hon’ble Commission members there was an agreement about breaching the gap between the tariffs of different categories of consumers.
It was accepted that the industrial consumers, specially small and medium ones were
heavily subsidizing the other categories of consumers.
Hon’ble Commission had already initiated the process of breaching this
gap as is evident from its order on the ARR for 00-01 and 01-02. But the ARR presented
before the commission by UPPCL has once again proposed to hike the MGG and demand charges
for industrial consumers. As submitted earlier MCG should be done away with and the demand
charges may not be increased otherwise it will result in reversal of the process initiated
by the Hon’ble Commission.
Conclusion and Prayer :
That realizing the fact that Hon’ble Commission is putting its all out efforts
to put UPPCL on the rails and provide relief
to the consumers ,we wish to submit the following summary of suggestions and prayer.
1. The
standards and performance norms laid down by Hon’ble Commission in its first order
may be included into “perspective plan” by UPPCL and made public within a time
frame fixed by Hon’ble Commission.
2. UPPCL
may be directed to improve the quality of supply within the specified time. Frequent
breakdowns and fluctuations in supply voltage and frequency causes heavy loss of material
and other resources to industries.
3. UPPCL
may be directed to assess real technical losses and separate these from other losses so
that the tariff can be defined objectively.
4. Directions
may be issued to UPPCL to bring collection efficiency at par with States like A.P. and a
benchmark should be fixed for it, including for the recovery of past arrears.
5. Billing
has always been seen as a mystery and there is a need to have independent bill
verification mechanism.
6. Meters
being installed at cost of consumer are still subjected to rent which may be stopped.
7. The T
& D losses may be taken as 29.5% as fixed by Hon’ble Commission for the year
2003-03 in its first order. Though there is an urgent need to reduce these losses to the
international standards, if the industry is to be made competitive globally.
8. At
least 20% of recovery from existing arrears from consumers may be taken into account till
a norm is fixed by Hon’ble Commission.
9. Unmetered
supply by UPPCL to its employees may be converted into metered supply as it a cause of
embarrassment to UPPCL. It could be charged at lower rates.
10. Efforts may also be made to
control administrative and establishment cost by higher productivity level.
11. Accounting and record keeping
by UPPCL may be made more perfect and transparent.
12. Till, big gap between
industrial consumers and other consumers is reduced to a reasonable level, there may not
be any tariff increase for the industrial consumers as has been done in A.P.
13. The LMV-6 may be brought at
par with HV-2 and merged with it giving option to consumers, up to 100 BHP load (a) to opt
for JVM if they so desire and (b) to
continue at 0.400 KV Voltage as they are mostly located away from 11KV lines, without any
extra charges for supply at low voltage.
14. Tariff structure may be
simple enough to generate faith of consumers and help industry in its healthy growth to
keep UPPCL in its incremental growth. Incentive to higher industry consumption
differential time of use tariffs, regular payment etc. should be introduced and regime of
penalty be replaced by regime of service and consumer satisfaction.
The Indian Industries Association would like and
request for making a presentation before the Hon’ble commission.
(D.S. Verma)
Executive Director
Indian
Industries Association Lucknow |