BHUBANESWAR: The Central Electricity Supply Utility (CESU) on Thursday launched its drive against willful defaulters by disconnecting power supply to 1,545 commercial consumers with realisation of Rs 5.38 crore arrears from around 14,000 consumers.
On the first day, 533 special squads of the utility touched 13,411 commercial consumers in 19 divisions of eight districts and power supply was snapped from 1,545 consumers. “The collection of Rs 5.38 crore does not include online payments made by the consumers,” CESU said.
The highest number of disconnection was reported from two divisions each in Cuttack and Bhubaneswar. The maximum collection of arrear dues of Rs 83.54 lakh was from Puri division.
The utility focused on arrear collection rather than disconnection. It has received complaints from 3,971 consumers on bill revision and 2,346 of them have availed instalment facilities for clearing their arrears. Defaulting commercial consumers of Saheed Nagar and Barmunda here cleared their outstanding dues in full, said a statement of the utility.
A senior officer of the utility said the collection-cum-disconnection drive will continue in a phased manner. In the second phase, high-value domestic consumers keeping huge outstanding arrears will be touched. CESU has once again appealed the consumers having arrears to clear their dues for the better service delivery.