Odisha asks officials to complete rural electrification by December 2017

Bhubaneswar: Chief Secretary Aditya Prasad Padhi today directed officials to expedite rural electrification works and achieve power connectivity to all villages by end of December 2017.

Energy Secretary, Hemant Kumar Sharma in a Power distribution review meeting chaired by the Chief Secretary informed that a detailed project report (DPR) was prepared to electrify 3,474 un-electrified villages in the year 2014-15. So far 3,150 villages have been connected with power supply.

Padhi instructed the energy department to electrify all the rest 324 villages within December 2017.

Moreover, discussions during the meeting revealed that Odisha has achieved 5 percent reduction in Aggregate Technical and Commercial (AT&C) loss in low tension sector during the year 2016-17. The loss reduction during the first four months has been more than 1.5 per cent in comparison to the corresponding period of the last year, informed Sharma.

Padhi directed the discoms (power distribution companies) to achieve 7 percent reduction in AT & C loss in the current year.

Sharma also gave details of various measures taken for strengthening power supply system and performance in billing and collections.

He said billing and collection has improved after introduction of performance based incentive system. Mobile-phone-based billing system, receiving payment of power bills at post offices, installation of POS machines in counters of all discoms and digital payment gateways are a few initiatives taken to improve performance.

Furthermore, ten performance, loss reduction and evaluation indicators were also identified in the meeting based on the experience of earlier operations.