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Sambalpur/Balasore/Berhampur: After CESU Odisha's power disconnection drive, other power distribution companies like Western Electricity Supply Company of Odisha (WESCO) has now decided to commence crackdown on electricity bill defaulters from February 18.
Authorised Officer, Headquarter Office WESCO, Tapas Kumar Pattnaik on Saturday urged electricity consumers to pay their pending bills by February 17 and informed that those who do not heed to the directive will face disconnection from a day after that.
In the first phase, power supply of defaulting commercial and private establishments will be terminated from February 18 followed by other individual consumers.
Till now a total of Rs Rs 2117 crore of electricity bill is pending against commercial and private establishments, said Pattnaik.
As per official sources, out of total defaulters, 1, 25,180 consumers have not paid any electricity bills in last two years. While as many as 2, 57,652 consumers are yet to clear pending bills of more than Rs 25,000 on each head, power dues of more than Rs 50,000 each is pending on 1, 34,561 consumers.
Apart from WESCO, power suppliers like Nesco and Southco have also decided to launch similar drive to collect pending dues from consumers under their jurisdiction.
Briefing media, officials of both Southco at Berhampur and Nesco at Balasore informed about their drives to disconnect power supply of the defaulters who haven't paid their bills.
The massive disconnection drive of Southco will commence from February 16, 2020 with reports claiming that the utility has a huge amount of Rs 1357 crore pending as arrears. The AO of Southco Utility, Pradip Kumar Sahoo, at a presser in Berhampur said, "The disconnection drive is aimed at improving the financial health of the organisation. Large amount of arrears have been accumulated over the years and it's adversely impacting the performance of Southco Utility."
Sahoo further said, "Southco is perhaps in the poorest of conditions among all other power utility companies. So we have decided to launch this drive to collect arrear money from defaulting consumers,"
As per the press release, Southco has made an action plan to reach out to all the defaulting consumers through SMS, e-mail, public notices through print and electronic media, leaflets and public address systems.
Similarly, Nesco also declared about conducting a disconnection drive at Balasore. During a presser, the spokesperson of the power utility company said, "Nesco has a total of 18.72 lakh consumers under its jurisdiction, of which 10.81 lakh defaulting consumers have a cumulative arrear of approximately Rs 1500 crore."
As per the Utility company, 39,000 business establishments and 1962 industries have arrears of Rs 95 crore and Rs 305 crore respectively.
Nesco announced that it will send notices to the defaulters on February 2, 2020 and commence its disconnection drive after a fortnight i.e. on February 18, 2020.
It's worth mentioning here that the Central Electricity Supply Utility (CESU) has already started crackdown on power defaulters under its jurisdiction from January 15, 2020 in a phased manner. It had targeted the commercial and rich defaulting consumers in the first phase and left the poor households for the last phase of disconnection drive.
