Franchisee system unjustified, say engineers
Manish Sirhindi
Tribune News Service

Panipat, July 5
The Haryana Power Engineers Association (HPEA) has demanded that the distribution of electricity in the state should not be handed over to private franchisee as is being mooted by the state government.

Expressing concern over a number of issues, power engineers during a meeting of the executive council of the association held here recently said introduction of the franchisee system in high revenue earnings and a low transmission losses area of Gurgaon and Panipat was unjustified.

They stated that outsourcing of the distribution system to bring down line losses was not required. Instead, the government should adopt the pattern followed by Andhra Pardesh discoms which had successfully reduced these losses by 20 per cent. The association stated that the state government should adopt zero tolerance policy towards theft of power by consumers.

In the meeting that was chaired by chairman of the All-India Power Engineers Federation Padamjit Singh, the engineers decried the delay in commissioning of the unit 1 of Khedar thermal plant, non-restructuring of state discoms, revision of pay scales of assistant engineers and lack of human resources development in power utilities.