“We have been facing the brunt of additional power cuts of at least two hours a day on top of the weekly quota of 88 hours,” said Prem Aryal, a resident of a housing society in Satdobato that houses around 200 families, adding he has been paying around Rs 1,500 every month in electricity bills. [break]
The NEA is currently enforcing two hours of additional power cuts on feeders with 40-50% of leakage, three hours on those with 50-60%, four hours on those with 60-70% and five hours on those with above 70% of power leakage. The parliamentary committee on Natural Resources and Means has further bolstered NEA by recently directing the government to cut electricity supply to areas with over 60 percent of leakage, after issuing a warning notice with a deadline to mend their ways.
“The extra loadshedding is forced on us despite regularly paying the electricity bills and for no fault of ours,” Aryal stated. “We have been paying around Rs 300 for the use of generator during loadshedding in the evening but the committee has not been able to provide the back-up service due to unavailability of diesel in recent times,” he added.
Advocate Madhav Basnet opined NEA cannot impose extra loadshedding on honest consumers who regularly pay for the use of electricity. “The leakage is not due to fault of those paying their bills. The NEA cannot punish others for its incompetence,” Basnet said. He argued that the state has to deal with dishonest consumers and honest people cannot be asked to double up as police.
“This is a perfect case for right to compensation and the consumers can take NEA to court and seek compensation for the extra expenses they have to make for other alternatives during the extra power cuts,” he added.
Chairman of NEA Balananda Paudel conceded that the method is not fair on honest consumers but argued that it is the best possible alternative to tackle the issue of power theft. “I agree that the honest minority is also suffering for the dishonesty of the majority but we have been able to bring down the leakage in some feeders to around 40% from over 70% by employing this method,” Paudel said.
He pointed to the fact that the total system leakage has gone down to below 28% from 29% since this method has been employed and said it will continue until we upgrade our system to be able to cut supply to individual customer as in the case of telephone lines. “I hope that this will spur us to go for upgradation of our system,” Paudel, who is also the secretary at Energy Ministry, added.
Lawmaker Laxman Ghimire, who is in the parliamentary committee on Natural Resources and Means, was aggressive in defense of the committee´s directive and said that opposing the decision would tantamount to promoting theft. “It is those very thieves who are coming with theses complaints fearing that they won´t be able to use power for free,” Ghimire argued.
He claimed the decision is aimed at discouraging power theft and also making the honest minority more aware to convince the dishonest neighbors or complain to the administration,” he stated. The Nepali Congress lawmaker, like NEA Chairman Paudel, insisted that honest people are also part of the state and should chip in to help the government.
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