'Negligence and faulty meters take toll on power consumers'

STAFF REPORTER

GUWAHATI: Defective power meters and negligence by meter readers take heavy toll on a section of power consumers in the State. And APDCL (Assam Power Distribution Company Ltd) MD Rakesh Agarwal has admitted this.

On March 9, 2021 some poor families at Jaipur Gaon in Nagrijuli staged protest against the APDCL. These poor power consumers without owning any white goods got inflated power bills ranging from Rs 10,000-28,000 for a month. While Shambhu Biswas got a power bill amounting to Rs 18,890, Sumita Das got a bill of Rs 22,000 and Abhi Mandal got a bill of Rs 28,000 for a month.

The cause of such inflated power bills may be either negligence on the part of meter readers or defects in meters.

When contacted on this incident of inflated power bills, APDCL MD Rakesh Agarwal said, "A section of our meter readers are casual in their assigned job. Apart from this, around 8 lakh of the around 63 lakh power meters in the State are defective. The replacement of the defective power meters is going on now. On the other hand, a section of meter readers has been suspended and the others have been warned.

"Accurate meter reading is a must. To make that happen, we're fitting artificial intelligence apps to power meters. The move will reduce consumers' complaints.

"We're also providing smart meters that have an app that updates daily power consumption in consumers' mobile phones so as to let them control power consumption. As many as 67,000 smart meters have been provided to consumers in Guwahati and Dibrugarh. Our target is to provide 2.68 lakh such meters.

"Following an instruction from the Government of India, we're also providing prepaid power meters. As many as 3,000 such power meters have been provided in Guwahati. In this facility, a consumer can recharge his power bill like internet recharge on mobile phones. All such new devices are meant for minimizing complaints from consumers."

"The State has around 62 lakh power consumers, around four lakh km power lines and around one lakh transformers. During the monsoon storms and rains snap power lines as often as not. In order to check that, we're planning a back-up plan for load-shedding problems at some places in Guwahati. At present the power demand in the morning is 1,199 MW that rises to 1,498 MW at the peak hours. The demand in the peak hour goes up to 2,000 MW during the summer.

"Power shortage is a thing of the past as we can purchase power from the market outside the State. Even then there are interruptions in power supply because of technical reasons," Agarwal said.

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