Chandigarh: The All India Power Engineers Federation (AIPEF) on Friday said most of the amendments proposed in the Electricity Act 2003 and National Tariff Policy are against the interests of the common consumers.
Stating this in a statement here, AIPEF Spokesperson V K Gupta said the worst part is the introduction of supply licenses who will only meter and supply power to the consumer from the nearby pole or transformer.
He said power engineers will resort to a one-day work boycott on January eight against the proposed amendment in Electricity Act 2003 to facilitate the privatization of power distribution.
State Discoms will maintain the power distribution network and the private company will earn heavy profits without any investment from high-end consumers and the universal supply obligation of subsidized consumers will be left with the State Discoms.
Under the new tariff policy, he said, the private company will charge the full amount with guaranteed profits from the consumers thus raising the bill of the consumers. Under this policy subsidy and cross-subsidy will be phased out in a period of three years.
At present BPL, farmers and other categories of consumers get subsidized power and the difference in supply cost is borne by industrial and other high-end consumers. With the abolition of this cross-subsidy, the power will become costly for common consumers, he added.
The proposal for installing smart meters is an exercise of a big scandal, he said and added that even today normal meters are working around the many developed countries without any problem.
Mr Gupta said the role of state regulatory commission will be reduced as they will be forced to follow national tariff policy. As electricity is a concurrent subject this is a direct attack on the rights of the states.
From the Discoms point of view, computerized energy accounting and metering will be the biggest hurdle. In a technologically advanced country like the United Kingdom, it took a decade to streamline the process.
Source: UNI
