Power Officials Dismayed

Collection of pending bills affected due to hostile residents

Awareness among consumers is important: Randhir Singh

Richeek Mishra

Agra. "Agar connection kata to transformer jala denge…(If power supply is disconnected Transformer will be set ablazed) ", "are chinta mat karo neta ji se kah kar connection katne se rukva denge…(don't worry, Neta Ji will be approached to recommend for avoiding disconnection)", these have become the most common situations, power corporation's officials come across, much to their consternation.

Dakshinanchal Vidyut Vitaran Nigam Limited (DVVNL) employees fail to collect long pending bills from densely populated areas of the city. The narrow lanes, angry consumers, mangled wires and lack of space for electrification hold these employees back to complete their responsibility. When power officials visit any rural or urban locality for collection of pending bills and try to disconnect the connections of defaulters, residents of that particular locality become angry and sometimes turn violent and exasperated corporation employees return from that area empty handed.

The most densely populated areas of the city from which the consumers are regularly evading pending bills are Kaji Pada, Dholikhar, Dhakran, Mantola, Panja Madrasa, Buddh Vihar, Nai Abadi, Machhli Bazaar and many others. Similarly, residents from many rural areas are also not depositing their pending bills. According to Executive Engineer division Ist GM Sharma, the residents always threaten us and turn violent if we take any stringent action.

The official records show that in the month of December-2007, department officials failed to recover pending bills from around 79,975 consumers from the entire Agra region. Only from rural Agra, 6638 pending bills could not be recovered. Not only this from the urban region around 38,205 pending bills are not recovered. The total number of un-recovered pending bills from Agra is 44,843, which is around 56 percent of the entire zone. Talking to DLAam, General Manager Randhir Singh said there is need of awareness among consumers to deposit their bills regularly. Local political leaders should also initiate regarding this issue.