ONGOLE: The long pending power bill dues of 27 government departments in the combined Prakasam district under the Ongole Circle of AP Central Power Distribution Company Limited (AP-CPDCL) have mounted to a tune of Rs 450 crore, turning into a huge financial burden on the discom.
In connection with this, the CPDCL-Ongole circle authorities are going to disconnect the power supplies at a few government offices as well as to the private institutions and organisations to increase pressure on them to pay their pending electricity bills within an early date. With the majority of the defaulters from government sector offices, the CPDCL authorities have formed special action teams of officials to collect the pending dues.
“We have served notices to all the defaulting government offices twice regarding the huge amount of pending power consumption bills, however, most of them haven’t responded properly yet. We even made requests through our higher authorities to them and the district collector AS Dinesh Kumar also directed them to pay the long pending power bills from their funds.
In this connection, we have deployed special teams headed by AEs and DEs of our department for the collection of long pending dues and they are going to implement certain strategies, including disconnecting the power supply to collect the bill amounts,” KVG Satyanarayana, Superintending Engineer (SE) explained.
On the other hand, many government departments have been suffering a lot due to a lack of budgetary fund allocations to pay their pending power bills. As a result, most of the local bodies i.e., the Panchayats and Municipalities are unable to clear the pending dues, which are mounted to around Rs 136 crore.
Though the local bodies have been receiving funds under the 14th and 15th Finance Commissions from the Centre and revenues from water bills, vacant land tax, and others, the amounts are meagre and they are unable to pay the electricity bills in time. As per the latest statistics, the RWS department is the biggest defaulter with Rs 141.04 cr pending bills.