While the political talk revolves around freebies with debates being held on providing free electricity, there's one crucial component of costs that has been conveniently overlooked. Call it political compulsions or vote-bank politics, the government of the day has ignored the fact that manpower costs add up to the bills and are recovered from the end consumers. This means the higher the manpower, the higher would be the bills.
Manpower expenses that the Goa government has been incurring have seen a steady increase from Rs 194.48 crore in 2014-15 to a projected Rs 343.81 crore in 2021-22. Given the background that these costs would inflate bills, it would have been prudent enough to work out an audit and study on ways to bring down these costs, leave alone the theory of free power.
The government is fully aware of the situation and has been reminded of these costs in the past. The Joint Electricity Regulatory Commission (JERC) has cautioned governments on the rising employee expenses and asked the electricity department to bring them down. If we may recall Power Minister Nilesh Cabral had admitted on the Floor of the House on July 25, 2019, that the JERC had asked the department to analyse manpower requirements and reduce costs. Two years later, the department is yet to put its mind to the job and submit a report.
The justification by Cabral that new vacancies are not being created is hollow and only exposes a lack of intent to find reason in the argument of costs. While Cabral has stoutly defended his stand that it cannot follow the AAP model of free electricity in Delhi, the least he could consider is to review manpower strength. If the vacancies that are announced are a result of retirements, this was an opportunity to leverage manpower costs that Cabral doesn't want to consider.
Alternatively, the government should have explored options on segments that impact billing. Why is the department not considering outsourcing on the lines of the Construction Division in the Electricity Department, works of which were contracted after it was shut down? On the contrary, we have a strange situation where the government is hiring meter readers on one side, while on the other hand, it announces plans of installing smart meters.
Additional recruitment of 243 posts at an election time is going to appease a section of voters, but on the other side, it will further burden the common man. Sadly, the State has a pathetic distribution system and ironically, people are paying a higher price because our manpower cost is high. The focus here should have been on better power distribution, not on an unjustified hike in manpower. We hope that while politicians are trying to play out to vote-banks, there is a deeper understanding of the impact of decisions on the common man who is grappling in these trying and testing times.
