HYDERABAD: All India Power Engineers Federation (AIPEF) strongly opposed the order of Ministry of Power, Government of India to make it mandatory to open and maintain adequate Letter of Credit (LC) as payment security systems by Discoms.
It has also opposed the NITI Aayog’s strategy paper to privatise the distribution of electricity throughout the country. The Ministry of Power states that adequate LCs are not being maintained by the power distribution companies (Discoms), causing undue stress to generating companies. The NLDC and RLDC shall dispatch power only after receiving intimation from Generators and Discoms that adequate LC has been opened.
However, the order states that Discoms will continue to pay the fixed charges to generating companies even when power is not being dispatched AIPEF termed the order as anti-people and appealed to Union Power Minister RK Singh to withdraw the order immediately as it will not be practically feasible to implement this mechanism due the poor financial status of Discoms.