the goan I network
PANAJI
The widely publicised drive of the Power Department to recover arrears of electricity bills from government departments and other State-owned agencies and local bodies could well be just a publicity stunt and may not impact the bottom lines of the nearly Rs 300 crore per year loss-making utility, top officials in the government said.
The whole exercise of collecting revenue from government department over pending electricity dues may not actually in the net sense increase the revenues of the State.
“In the overall analysis, for the State exchequer it will only be on paper and a book entry,” a top official said, but did not want to be quoted.
He said, it will be an exercise which will just make adjustments in the inter department budget heads which will just increase the revenue collection statistics of electricity department on paper.
“This is just an exercise to improve the revenue collection statistics of Electricity department. In net we will not have any money in coffers”, said a senior official from Electricity department when asked what is the benefit of the widely publicised exercise.
Meanwhile, Power Minister Nilesh Cabral who for last 8 months has initiated steps to collect figures of Demand Payment Collection (DPC) of last five years pending due from government departments and Corporations. Except sub-division I in Panaji, all other division engineers have done the exercise and have
submitted the long list of pending electricity dues from the government offices.
We are giving a deadline to government departments till March 31 to settle the dues otherwise we will go ahead with disconnection, warned Cabral.
He said that around Rs 382 crore is due towards electricity cost from other departments adding that the electricity department has received around Rs 125 crore through fund transfer adjustment and as such the revenue collection has increased to Rs 140 crore per month.
Earlier the revenue collection was just 125 crores while the outgoing cost was 128 months and department was in loss.
Plaint before Lokayukta alleges scam
PANAJI: A complaint has been filed before the Lokayukta alleging a scam in the recent disconnection of power to the Panaji market and later reconnecting it.
Alleging that the act of engineers concerned to restore power is illegal, the complainant has demanded an inquiry into the scam.
It may be recalled that Asst engineer (Com) electrical sub-div-II (U) Panaji had served a notice to CCP to clear outstanding dues of the Panaji market withing 48 hours and the power was cut after two days. The power was later restored after CM’s intervention and with CCP agreeing to settle the bill.
